Mars rover finds long-chain

organic compounds
Complex carbon molecules show that clues to past lifeif
anycould survive harsh martian conditions
By Eric Hand, in The Woodlands, Texas

or almost 40 yearsever since NASAs

Viking missionslanders and rovers
have searched the desiccated soil of
Mars for the carbon-bearing organic
compounds that would be essential for
any Earth-like life. Last week here at
the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference,
scientists working with NASAs Curiosity
rover announced a major milestone in that
search. They reported the most definitive detections of organic molecules yet, along with
hints of heavier, longer-chain molecules resembling those in cell walls.
The detected molecules do not necessarily
indicate past or present life on Mars. They
could also have come from asteroid impacts
or rocks that burbled up from Marss mantle.
But they at least show that fragile organic
materials can survive in the inhospitable
environmentwhich bodes well for searches
for clearer indicators of past life.
We are all excited about it, says Paul
Mahaffy, a scientist at the Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and
principal investigator for the Sample Analy1402

sis at Mars (SAM) instrument on Curiosity,

which made the detections. The fact that
there are any organic compounds in the near
surface at all is very promising. It suggests,
he says, that biosignatures, if any exist,
might survive billions of years to be detected
today in spite of the harsh surface conditions.
Marss soil is known to be filled with harsh
oxidizers like perchlorate, which break down
organic molecules. Ultraviolet (UV) light at
the surface can also destroy organics, as can
cosmic rays. The Viking landers may have
detected organic molecules in the form of
chloromethanes, but in such tiny quantities
about 15 parts per billionthat the team was
never confident about making a claim.
The Curiosity team is now making a claim
with gusto, having detected chlorobenzene
a six-carbon molecule in an aromatic ring
structureat levels of up to 300 parts per
billion. They have also detected smaller two-,
three-, and four-carbon chains in the alkane
family at lesser abundances. The results
were posted online on 4 March in advance
of publication in the Journal of Geophysical
Research: Planets.
The organics come from a sample that Cu-

Curiositys lab carries quartz sample cups (white) and

wet lab cups with solvent (silver).

riosity collected nearly 2 years ago by drilling

6.5 centimeters into a mudstonehardened
sediment from an ancient lakeat a site
called Cumberland. The SAM team took so
long to announce their finding in part because they wanted to be sure they had not
been fooled by contamination from leakage in their wet labs, which hold thimblefuls of a solvent called MTBSTFA, used in
isolating organic molecules. The SAM team
has now controlled for this background
contamination, and they have not seen the
chlorobenzene at subsequent sampling
sitesevidence that the Cumberland detection was real.
Curiosity scientists suspect that the chlorobenzene arose when organic molecules
reacted with perchlorate in the soil as the
sample was baked in SAMs ovens. To pin
down the precursor molecules, the SAM
team decided not to use any of their precious
thimbles; instead they took advantage of the
leaked MTBSTFA. They baked a sample from
Cumberland to drive off any perchlorate
and then exposed it to ambient MTBSTFA
inside the onboard lab for 2 days. The solvent makes organic molecules much more
volatile and thus more likely to be detected
by SAMs mass spectrometer before they react with anything else (like perchlorate). It
gives them wings so they can fly through the
instrument unimpeded, Mahaffy says. After
the exposure, the team slowly started heating
the sample again. Thats when this beautiful
set of rich organics showed up.
At the meeting, Danny Glavin, a SAM scisciencemag.org SCIENCE

27 MARCH 2015 VOL 347 ISSUE 6229

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PLANETARY SCIENCE

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IN DEP TH

NEWS

entist at Goddard, reported compounds that,

martian soil went through the SAM instruin a preliminary analysis, were consistent
ment before the Cumberland sample and
with an eight-carbon molecule akin to a benought to have scrubbed the instrument of
zoic acid, an 11-carbon alcohol-like molecule,
residual contamination. And George Cody,
and, most interesting of all, a 10-carbon mola geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for
ecule that could be a fatty acidlike carboxScience in Washington, D.C., says that the
ylic acid. Glavin is excited that long-chain
compound is unlikely to have come from
organics can survive in spite of the oxidizing
Earth. Fatty acids from biological sources,
compounds and UV-rich sunlight. The fact
like technicians fingerprints, Cody says,
that we see something long means this could
tend to have 14, 16, or 18 carbon atoms, not
be a good location for
10. Also, if the contamipreservation, he says.
nation were something
Other scientists wonlike residual machine
der if the compounds
oil, smaller chain orcould signify something
ganic compounds would
more than just good
have been detected
odds for preservation. In
in the background
the case of the 10-carbon
molecules that Curiosity
fatty acidlike compound,
does not see.
Youre talking about
The Curiosity team
cellular-wall material,
has yet to use any of the
says Marc Fries, a curaseven MTBSTFA thimtion scientist at NASAs
Drill hole from the Cumberland site, in
bles, or two with another
Astromaterials Acquisirock that was an ancient lakebed.
type of solvent. Glavin
tion and Curation Office
says the team is saving
at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
them for promising rock formations farther
Thats a potential biogenic molecule. But
up the mountain that Curiosity is now climbit could also be a contaminant, he cautions.
ing: clay mineralbearing deposits that, like
Fries notes that a 2014 study by scientists at
the Cumberland mudstone, probably formed
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
in water and could be a good location for
California, where the rover was assembled,
preserving organics. Mahaffy hopes to get a
warned that Curiosity could harbor traces of
chance to test one of his thimbles soonand
carboxylic acids, which are found in plant and
hopes to find even more-tantalizing organic
animal oils as well as synthetic lubricants.
molecules. Theres a lot of interesting sites
But Glavin points out that six batches of
coming along, he says.

Fixed nitrogen found in martian soil

By Eric Hand

PHOTO: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

rganic compounds arent the only molecules of life on Earth: Inorganic NO3bearing chemicals, known as nitrates, are also crucial for living organisms and
make up a key component of fertilizers. Now, in a study published this week in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the NASA Curiosity rover
team reports detecting nitrates on Mars.
The chemicals turned up in scoops of windblown dust as well as samples drilled
out of a mudstone thought to have been made from lakebed deposits billions of
years old. The rovers onboard lab, Sample Analysis at Mars, heated the rock dust
to release gases and ran them through a mass spectrometer, which spotted the
molecular signature of nitrogen. Marss atmosphere is now just 2% nitrogen (N2),
but scientists suspect that it abounded in nitrogen in the pastjust as Earths
atmosphere does today.
On Earth, microbesespecially bacteria living in the nodules of legume plants
do the hard work of breaking N2s triple bonds and turning it into nitrate that can
be fixed in the soil. Rover scientists say things probably happened differently on
Mars, where the energy of asteroid impacts could have done the fixing in a flash.
Regardless, the discovery shows nitrate would have been available as a nutrient
in Marss ancient past. In a way, it provides what fertilizer would provide, says
Jennifer Stern, a planetary geochemist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland, and lead author of the study. Its another support for habitability.

SCIENCE sciencemag.org

CHEMICAL REGULATION

Reform of
toxics law is
contentious
Plan to rewrite 1976 law
draws bipartisan support
but harsh criticism
By Puneet Kollipara

f the roughly 80,000 industrial

chemicals in commerce in the United
States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has substantially
restricted the use of less than 10.
Thats just one reason observers
on all sides agree that the countrys longstanding chemical testing law is broken.
Last week, a U.S. Senate committee set out
to fix it, launching what is expected to be a
long, contentious effort to rewrite the 1976
Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
There has never been a bipartisan effort with this much potential, said Senator
Tom Udall (DNM) at an 18 March hearing
of the Senate environment committee on a
bill (S. 697) that he and 19 other senators,
Democratic and Republican, recently rolled
out that would revamp the law. Groups that
rarely agree share that goal: Environmentalists and regulators decry TSCA because
it gives EPA so little clout, while some industry groups complain that TSCAs flaws
have led states to enact a patchwork of laws
that complicate compliance.
But coming up with a new law that can
satisfy everyone wont be easy. The legislation, co-sponsored by Senator David Vitter
(RLA), has drawn support from industry
and the Environmental Defense Fund. Yet
other environmental and public health
groups, as well as some state officials, complain that Udalls bill would sometimes prevent states from writing their own tough
regulations, fail to adequately accelerate
EPAs efforts to screen potentially dangerous chemicals, and give industry too much
voice in agency decisions. The bill is worse
than the current law. We cant go there,
said Senator Barbara Boxer (DCA), the top
Democrat on the environment panel, at a
17 March press conference. She has offered
an alternative bill that she argues would
give EPA and state governments stronger
oversight power.
Nearly 40 years ago, lawmakers approved
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