New answers tagged methane
38
I am Jose Juan Lopez Moreno, co-I (co-investigator) of TGO-NOMAD and I feel obliged to respond to PearsonArtPhoto's answer.
There is something real: TGO carries 2 independent instruments with a sensitivity high enough to detect methane with a low limit of 0.05 ppbv. Those independent instruments are led by different and independent teams. They are far from ...
33
There's a lot to unpack here, so let's look at the various discoveries of methane on Mars.
The first discovery came from multiple groups in 2003-2004 using first Mars Express, followed by Earth based instruments. The measured amounts were small, and being from Earth, could be tricky to know for sure. Mars Global Surveyor data was studied, and it seemed to ...
3
tl;dr: Except for the signal being 3x larger, at this point nothing new has been learned.
The only thing new I can see is that the signal is 3x larger than the previous one recorded by Curiosity, removing any potential lingering doubt about the reality of signal, which at only 7 ppb was close to the error bars.
Source
Now at 21 ppb (3x larger than the ...
2
Since the readings were only taken a couple of days ago, it's too early.
From NASA's report:
Curiosity's scientists need time to analyze these clues and conduct many more methane observations. They also need time to collaborate with other science teams, including those with the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter, which has been in its science ...
1
Will the Mars 2020 rover's sensitivity to methane be better than Curiosity's?
No, Mars 2020 rover's sensitivity to atmospheric methane will be nonexistent. Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars or SAM with its quadrupole mass spectrometer (QMS), gas chromatograph (GC), and tunable laser spectrometer (TLS) will have no counterparts on the streamlined Mars 2020 ...
3
Assuming the methane stays in orbit around the Earth as indicated by uhoh, it will then not do much else. Wikipedia has a fairly extensive article about methane in the atmosphere, and it mentions that the primary reaction of methane in the atmosphere is oxidation by hydroxyl radicals. Because the hydroxyl radicals come from water and water in our ...
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