{"id":489,"date":"2019-06-27T13:08:20","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T13:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/?p=489"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:28:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:28:35","slug":"spying-on-curiosity-and-detecting-methane-above-the-clay-unit-in-gale-crater-sol-2424","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/2019\/06\/27\/spying-on-curiosity-and-detecting-methane-above-the-clay-unit-in-gale-crater-sol-2424\/","title":{"rendered":"Detecting Methane above the Clay Unit in Gale Crater Sol 2424"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Around this locality in the Clay Unit of Gale Crater we have\u00a0 been doing more methane measurements with the SAM instrument. This highlights the enigmatic nature of Mars\u2019 atmospheric methane.\u00a0 A couple of weeks ago we analysed a large spike at 20 parts per billion molecules.\u00a0 Then a few a days to follow this up we returned to background levels at around 1 ppb. This may explain why Trace Gas Orbiter hasn\u2019t yet identified any methane from orbit, it is transitory.\u00a0 Formation of some clay-like phases (in particular serpentine) can release methane, so possibly ancient methane is being periodically released from the Clay Unit.\u00a0 To get further information about biological or non biological origins \u2013 particularly isotopes of carbon and hydrogen &#8211; will need sample return, starting with the next NASA rover Mars2020.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-500\" src=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/files\/2019\/06\/GlenTorridon-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/files\/2019\/06\/GlenTorridon-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/files\/2019\/06\/GlenTorridon-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/files\/2019\/06\/GlenTorridon-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/files\/2019\/06\/GlenTorridon.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Around this locality in the Clay Unit of Gale Crater we have\u00a0 been doing more methane measurements with the SAM instrument. This highlights the enigmatic nature of Mars\u2019 atmospheric methane.\u00a0 A couple of weeks ago we analysed a large spike at 20 parts per billion molecules.\u00a0 Then a few a days to follow this up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}