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Published online 14 November 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1231
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Methane site ruled out on Mars
Engineers say potential spacecraft landing spot is too risky.
Safety considerations have caused engineers planning the next NASA Mars rover to discard a potential landing site where a scientist has claimed to have detected methane, a gas that on Earth is mostly biological in origin.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have been working overtime — and going hundreds of millions of dollars over budget — to complete the Mars Science Laboratory in time for a 2009 launch (see 'Mars missions face cost crunch.
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Does/did Mars harbor life? All else is executive expense chits. Send a polarimeter to detect biological homochirality. Protein amino acid optical rotations are small. Add Cu(II) to massively boost them, chelation and the Cotton effect. It is an undergraduate lab experiment. One tires of intensive studies of gravel followed by exhortations that sand might be the Holy Grail.