A team of Canadians will be part of an international effort that will search for signs of life on Mars during the 2016 mission to the Red Planet.
Ed Cloutis, a professor in the department of geography at the University of Winnipeg, is among seven Canadian scientists who will either help design the instrument, known as the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer, or study the images and examine the composition of the red planet’s atmosphere. Others involved in the NASA-European Space Agency mission include scientists from the University of Toronto, York University and Dalhousie University.
Professor Cloutis answered some questions about the project.
How did the Canadian team get involved?
The instrument that’s flying on this mission in 2016 is going to be jointly built by Canadian industry and the United States. It made sense that a joint U.S.-Canadian instrument would also have a joint U.S.-Canadian science team [working] on it.
Describe the mission.
There has always been a focus on Mars exploration in terms of searching for life on Mars. There are various ways that you can approach looking for signs of either past or current life on Mars. One way is to go down to the surface with landers and rovers and look directly for evidence of life. The approach that we’re taking with this mission is that we’re going to look at the composition of the Mars atmosphere in great detail. We’re going to look at the presence or absence of a whole range of different gases in the atmosphere. The idea behind that is when microbes and bacteria do their thing, like eating and growing, during those chemical reactions they release certain gases to the atmosphere. We’re looking for similar things on Mars. So we want to look for gases that are either only produced biologically or usually produced biologically.
Hasn’t methane been detected before on Mars?
One of the things that started this whole thing up is the detection of methane in the Mars atmosphere, and that was done a couple of years ago. One of the things with methane is that it can be produced biologically, but it can also be produced geologically. So at this point we don’t know how the methane on Mars was produced. One of the goals of the mission is to look at the distribution of methane in the atmosphere on Mars and see where it’s produced and when it’s produced. If it’s produced biologically, odds are you’re going to have more methane produced during the summer when things are warmer and bacteria are more active.
Describe the instrument – the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer – that is being designed.
I describe it as a digital camera on steroids. The way the instrument is going to work is it’s going to be looking at the sun just over the horizon of Mars. So, in other words, the sun is on one side of Mars, the spacecraft is on the other, and it’s going to be looking at the sunlight as it passes through the atmosphere. The light that’s reaching the camera is passing through the atmosphere, so that light is being affected by what’s in the atmosphere. We’re going to be looking at what are called absorption lines due to some of these trace gases in the atmosphere.
What is your role?
My role is to look at the composition of the dust that’s in the atmosphere. If we’re going to determine what gases are present, part of that determination is interfered by dust that’s in the atmosphere. I’m going to look at the light that’s coming in the spectrometer, not worrying about the gases, but looking at the dust. From that, I can determine what the composition of the dust is, because it’s possible that the dust may have some minerals in it that we don’t see on the surface, but it might be easier to detect when they’re present in atmospheric dust.
And what will that tell you?
It will hopefully give us a better idea of the range of minerals that might be present on Mars. We need to know the composition of the dust so we can extract the composition of the atmosphere better. The other thing is that there may be minerals in the dust that we don’t see on the surface. Finally, minerals in the atmosphere interact. On Mars, we can say something about the atmosphere because of the kinds of minerals that are there, because the two interact. They’re not separate.
What is the hope of the mission?
The hope is to detect some gases in the atmosphere that can only be produced biologically. That will tell us that there is some form of life on Mars.
Do you think there’s life on Mars?
It depends on the time of day you talk to me. Sometimes I think it’s got to be there. Other times I think probably not. I would guess that there is life on Mars, but it’s not very abundant and it’s only present in a few areas. It’s probably not on the surface, just because the surface is a very nasty environment, and so pretty much any terrestrial bacteria we can think of would have a very tough time surviving on the surface.
This interview has been edited and condensed
