'Extreme analytical chemistry' will help unravel Mars' mysteries (Forwarded)

Tufts University

Contact:
Kim Thurler, 617-627-3175

August 3, 2007

'Extreme analytical chemistry' will help unravel Mars' mysteries

Mars may also hold clues to climate change on earth, says Tufts' Sam
Kounaves, co-investigator on Phoenix Mars Mission

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. -- Sam Kounaves spends his time unraveling
fundamental questions in planetary science by applying "extreme analytical
chemistry" to the harshest environments imaginable: Places like Death
Valley, Antarctica -- and now Mars.

The Tufts professor is a co-investigator on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander
Mission currently scheduled for launch on August 4. Kounaves will be
leading the chemical analysis of Martian soil and ice after the Lander
craft touches down on Mars in May 2008.

It's a fitting challenge for someone who grew up with dreams of being an
astronaut going to Mars, and fascinated by science. Kounaves is one of
only two dozen investigators on the project that is tapping resources from
universities and companies around the world.

Watery Clues to Life

Those who seek clues to life always "follow the water." So, Phoenix is
designed to study the history of water and search for complex organic
molecules in the ice-rich soil of the Martian arctic. Kounaves will
spearhead the chemical interpretation of the inorganic and electrochemical
analyses of the soil-ice constituents, their relationship to past and
present Martian geochemistry, and the potential of the Martian environment
to support microbial life.

"We will also try to decipher the climatic history of Mars via the
chemical record left in the soil," he says. That history, he says, may
hold vital clues and lessons for climate change on Earth.

Phoenix incorporates some of the most sophisticated advanced technology
ever sent to Mars, according to NASA. A robotic arm will dig through the
soil to the water-ice layer underneath, and deliver soil and ice samples
to the mission's experiments. On the Lander deck, miniature ovens and a
mass spectrometer will chemically analyze trace matter, the wet chemistry
laboratory (WCL) will characterize the soil and ice chemistry, imaging
systems will provide an unprecedented view of Mars, and a meteorological
station will study the atmosphere and clouds.

Kounaves' team is focused on the WCL, which includes four teacup-size
beakers that will receive soil-ice samples. He and his researchers -- most
of them Tufts students -- have developed sampling and analytical
methodologies to ensure reliable chemistry and geochemical analysis. In
addition, his group was responsible for delivering, as flight ready
hardware, the tiny crucibles that hold the chemical reagents that will be
mixed with soil-ice samples, and a sensor array originally developed at
Tufts for analysis of metal ions in water. The concentrations and forms of
inorganic and organic molecules are among the signatures of life that the
Phoenix team is looking for.

"We're basically explorers," Kounaves notes, "just like the explorers of
centuries past. Usually an analytical chemist would receive samples and be
asked to analyze them. With this project, we are also involved with the
overwhelming challenge of getting to the sample, insuring we conduct a
scientifically valid chemical analysis, and doing good science."

The biggest surprise so far? "That, for all the differences, Mars is so
earth-like." For example, polar ice caps, permafrost, climate, and perhaps
liquid water exist on both planets. "Scientists have been able to find
microbes in Antarctica and miles underground where it was thought
impossible for any life to exist," he muses. "If life on Earth can exist
in such severe places, perhaps it may have started and still exist on
Mars."

"Are We Alone in the Universe?"

Kounaves and Research Associate Suzanne Young will be at Cape Canaveral,
Fla., for Phoenix's launch. Growing up, Young took apart everything she
could lay her hands on, including the oven. She still loves playing with
the big toys and asking the big questions -- like "Are we alone in the
universe"".

In the Tufts lab, she points out students who are conducting tests to
ensure that sensors in the WCL will withstand everything that Mars can
dish out. Procedures that would be simple on Earth become Herculean under
frigid Martian conditions that would crack similar sensors used on Earth.
Notable is a tank labeled "Mini Mars," which mimics the atmospheric
pressure on Mars; "Tank o' Mars" replicates the planet's alien atmosphere
-- more than 95 percent carbon dioxide, with smatterings of nitrogen and
argon.

At the beginning of this year, the Tufts team produced the tiny crucibles,
containing salts or acids, that the Lander will carry 423 million miles to
Mars. Each crucible is about 3.5 by 7 mm, made of stainless steel and
Teflon-coated so it slides easily in the dispenser mechanism. "It's
amazing that stuff we touched will be on Mars," says Young.

Student Scientists Make Big Contributions

The group's accomplishments are all the more impressive because, unlike
most of the mission teams, it's comprised almost entirely of students,
including Tufts undergraduates.

Jason Kapit is a three-year Phoenix team member who is working on his M.S.
in mechanical engineering from Tufts after graduating with a degree in
engineering physics in 2006. "What students get to do at Tufts is pretty
cool," he says. "This is a research university but small enough for anyone
to get involved in exciting projects." So passionate is he about the
project that on spring break 2007 he went to Denver to see the actual
Phoenix Lander at Lockheed Martin. "It was like Christmas morning for me.
I was so excited the night before, I couldn't sleep."

Shake and Bake, Rock and Roll

As launch day drew closer, the team was busy tweaking experiments.
Everything needs to pass muster under the severe shake and bake and rock
'n roll conditions of launch, landing and the Red Planet itself.

The Lander will operate about three months after it touches down on Mars,
providing plenty of live data for the project team to analyze and
interpret. But Kounaves and Young are looking at the mission through a
much longer lens. "Space exploration ultimately will be essential to our
survival as a species," says Young. "Eventually, we're going to have to
move on from Planet Earth."

The 2007 Phoenix Mars Mission is the first in NASA's "Scout Program." The
Phoenix was one of 30 proposals submitted to NASA in 2002. Kounaves was a
member of the winning proposal, selected in August 2003, and initially
funded by NASA for $325 million. He is currently the principal
investigator or co-principal investigator on three other NASA-supported
research projects, including one to try to understand how to definitively
detect microbial life on planets.

"There is nothing more intellectually satisfying as an educator and
scientist," says Kounaves, "than being on the cutting edge of discovery,
of using the scientific method to expand human awareness of who we are,
where we came from, and perhaps where we can go."

More about the Phoenix and other research in the Kounaves lab can be found
at
http://planetary.chem.tufts.edu
Updated Phoenix launch information is available at
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix


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