IN SEARCH OF LIFE ON MARS

July 2012

ISBN: 978-976-8233-58-5

by

Lyall Winston Small#68 Welches Terrace, St Thomas

Barbados

All rights reserved

No textual part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,without the permission of the owner.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSSeveral individuals or entities contributed in various ways tothe development of this ebook. Foremost amongst these werethe following;

NASA / JPL, for providing general public access to the rawimages from its MER and other missions; Gil Levin; whosepapers inspired me to search the MER 2004-2012 images forsigns of the life I think he discovered in 1976; and Mark Careyfor providing the MarsRoverBlog (MRB) forum that allowedme to interact with a number of other marsaholics.

In addition several regular posters at MarsRoverBlog, headedby Hortonheardawho, Barsoomer, MPJ, Mann and Fred andwith intermittent inputs from; Dishman, r_Page, Scidude,Fossils, a1call, Denis, Jamdix, r_lewis, Francisco Ogarzun,Mizar, JHD, Henry and Marsman, engaged in many hours ofdiscussion that helped to concretize my ideas on Mars andprovided many of the internet links that I’ve used in the ebook.

Thanks are also due to the “just rock” guys on the blog,especially Ben, Newboy, Brian, ArizonaSt and Serpens, whotried their best to keep me on a straight and narrow path ofgeological correctness.

Thanks must also go to my family, especially to my son Ericfor his encouragement and my wife Jean for her support whenI was, in her words, “on Mars”.

The interpretations of the images in this book are my own andshould not be taken as having been derived from or approvedby any Corporate entity or other individual person.

CONTENTS1: Background.

1.2: Mars in myth and in 2012.

1.3: The 1976 Viking LR experiments.

1.4: The MER rovers. Opportunity and Spirit.

2: Extremophiles thrive on Earth so why not on Mars.

3: The significance of water to life and signs that liquid watercurrently exists sporadically on Mar’s surface.

4: What are the Opportunity Blueberries?

5: The MER wheel tracks and their possible significance inthe search for life on Mars.

6 Other visual indicators of life imaged by the Rovers.

7: The future; What might Curiosity find?

8: Conclusions.

9: Glossary.

List and credits for illustrations.

References.

CHAPTER 1: BackgroundDuring the past eight years the Mars Rovers, Spirit andOpportunity, have been exploring two small portions of thesurface of Mars and sending back numerous detailed imagesof rocks and other components of the surface in a mission tocharacterize those surfaces from a geology perspective. Duringmost of that time I have been a regular contributor to thediscussions on the MarsRoverBlog forum that related to thepossibility of microbial life existing on or near the surface ofMars at the present time and if one or both Rovers might havecaptured signs of such putative life.

My main thrust in those discussions has been that if oneassumes that Gil Levin succeeded in demonstrating metabolicsignatures of life in his Viking LR experiments of 36 or soyears ago, such life should exist and be thriving near thesurface globally. Microbial life should therefore be ubiquitousin the subsurface. However it would be virtually undetectableby current and past lander and rover instruments because theywere not designed to discover or identify signs of currentmicrobial life per se but instead for finding geochemicalfootprints of ancient water near the surface.

I’ve been collecting numerous raw images from the Pancamand Microscopic Imagers of both rovers over the last eightyears and recently had the idea of writing an ebook about thevarious images that suggested to me that there might be extantlife at both Gusev and Meridiani, hiding in plain view near thesurface. Such signs of life might not necessarily be fossils orother macroscopic remains but instead could be visual effectsof microscopic life on the rocks and on other components ofthe environment that would have been affected or produced bysuch life.

There were numerous observations that informed thatspeculation. Some of these were; The images from both roversshowed a dynamic vibrant surface of Mars. The surface didnot look dry and lifeless despite all the remonstrations of anumber of contributors who robustly championed the view thateverything seen in the images were rocks and only rocks.

The first images that Opportunity sent back revealed millionsof predominantly spherical “blueberries”. These wereexplained to be haematite concretions that were formed billionsof years ago in ancient crater lakes and, when the watervanished, they remained on the surface by an inanimate desertpavement uplift process which kept the heavy pebbles on thesurface. Their remaining on the surface to this day, becausereplenishment was impossble, has been attributed to theirimmense hardness even though several images showedreasonably high proportions of degraded, split or otherwisedamaged berries.

Another observation was the occurrence of several “micro-channels” in the images. These features, usually on crater wallsor near craters, looked almost exactly as one would expect smallchannels that had carried water to look. However, these werealso explained as being cracks in the bedrock that had becomefilled with very fine dust which gave an erroneous impressionof water channels.

Related to the above was the upsurge in the numerousdemonstrations by NASA and other Planetary Scientists thatcurrent liquid water flows occur regularly on the surface e.g.the Slope Lineae observations and research. Observations ofrecently formed craters on the surface of Mars showing icewhich sublimed over a short period, added to the evidence thatcurrent water can exist transiently on the surface of Mars.

Similarly, the chance observation and follow up work on theaccidental trenching of soil in Columbia Hills, Gusev by Spiritand the exposure of salts near the surface and then thedemonstration that water was lost from the exposed salts overa relatively short period, demonstrated that water was likelytrapped just under the surface. Indeed Alian Yang hassuggested that his work may demonstrate that habitable zonesfor microbes might be just below the surface in such areas.

The tracks that were often left by MerB and MerA on certainsoil surfaces were also suggestive of recent water flows orupwellings. The most noteworthy of these were the firstimpressions the rovers made on Mars by the Rover’s airbags.

The mudlike appearance of some wheel tracks was laterexplained as being related to a high content of fine soil particles,a fineness which, on its own, was apparently sufficient toexplain why it would clump together, show the clearimpressions of the wheel tracks, or airbags, and lookessentially like mud on earth.

The unexpected cohesiveness of the soil was another featurethat was explained as probably being a result of electromagnetic attraction between particles and not of dampness oractivity of microbes which would have explained such acharacteristic in Earth soils.

Another enigma was the strange patterns taken up by the SODsor Self Organizing Dust on mar’s surfaces. This dust generallyclumps together to assume very regular repetitive shapes suchas circles, chains, filaments, etc. The nature of the SODs wasexplained as also being a purely physical phenomenon relatedto electro magnetic attraction between fine soil particles.

This book is predominantly a presentation of a number ofcomposite colour images developed from the NASA-JPLdatabase of raw MER rover images, that illustrate each of theareas outlined above.

I have attempted to use the images to make a case that, basedon the results of the Viking LR experiments and the imagessent back to Earth by the MER rovers, supplemented with theresults of several studies by a variety of scientists onextremophile microbial species on Earth and also onsimulations of Mar’s environmental conditions, it is morereasonable to conclude that it is possible that microbial lifemay exist just below the surface of Mars right now, than tomake the usual judgements that Mar’s surface is dry, no surfacewater exists and that therefore it is impossible for any signs ofmicrobial life to exist at the surface.

I think life was discovered on Mars in 1976, through the VikingLR experiments and I think that, if one looks carefully, theMER rovers have provided visual evidence that suggestsLevin’s claims are probably true. In any case there are noimages that unequivocally suggest that Mar’s surface is sterile.

This book is not a Scientific paper by any means. It is ratheran attempt at a distillation of information in the public domainthat suggests a possibility that microbial life exists on Mar’ssurface. Indeed, I would hope it will demonstrate thatcontributions by persons on the Blogs can be as valuable asthose by Scientists in their well equipped Laboratories.

Anyone interested in the pure scientific aspects can go tomarsroverblog where there are several posters who they canengage scientifically on any aspect of the topic and whereposters scour the web to ensure that the latest relevant findingsare discussed.

My hope is that readers will examine the various compositesthat I have assembled here from the raw images posted on theNASA/JPL MER rovers website and decide for themselves ifthere might or might not be another side to the apparent currentscientific consensus that there can be no life on or near thesurface of Mars. I don’t think the MER images and much ofthe new published data support that conclusion.

The illustrations provided in this ebook are primarilycomposites or other enhancements of the essentially publicdomain NASA/JPL raw images from the Mars ExplorationRover Mission. My colour composites are mainly combinationsof raw L257 filter images which allow much greater visualresolution of different chemical components of a scene than thestandard, almost monochrome, “true” colour images. Stereoimages were made in Stereophotomaker. Stereo anaglyphsmust be viewed using red and blue anaglyph glasses .

A few images, posted to MRB by the incredibly prolific andtalented Hortonheardawho, are included in this ebook. Theebook also includes a few public domain images from otherweb pages, usually for comparison with specific MER images.

The sources of the images which were not assembled orprocessed by me are indicated and acknowledged in a list inthe second last chapter.

Many of the images in this book were cropped to try to ensurethat the features being described could be clearly seen and tomaximise the numbers of images presented. Many originalimages related to those in the ebook may be found at mysmugmug picture page where they are freely available to thegeneral public.

The dimensions of the objects in the Pancam images are notgenerally indicated on the illustrations in this ebook since thesize of any particular object may vary significantly from onescene to another depending on the distance from the camera.However, since the average size of the berries is known andthey are present in almost every image of the surface ofMeridiani, this can be used to roughly estimate the sizes of otherobjects where berries are present.

For MI images, a one mm wide reference scale is placed insome images. This scale is a 1 mm yellow and black line for2D MIs and a coloured 3D box, 1 mm wide, for 3D anaglyphs.The width of the 3D box in some PanCam images bears norelationship to scale.

Berries are between 0.7 and 6.6 mm in size in the imagesderived from MI’s. Most of the chains, spherelets, etc. in thoseimages are around 0.1 mm or 100um wide.

The first 2 chapters in this book may be considered as aliterature review of sorts as they seek to outline the currentlyunderstood situation on topics that are directly or intimatelyrelated to the possibility of life existing on Mars. Thatinformation is included as background to the informationpresented in the rest of the book.

The ebook “Microbes of Mars” published in 2011 by Barry EDi Gregorio, provides a balanced presentation of the case forthe current existence of life on Mars and is indeed an updateon his seminal book; “Mars, a living Planet”. Many of thebackground topics that are presented in summary form in thisebook are more comprehensively dealt with in “Mars, a livingplanet” and the “Microbes of Mars”.

1.2: Mars in myth and in 2012

Mars, our nearest planetary neighbour, has been the subject ofmyth and speculation for as long as mankind first looked to theheavens and observed its enigmatic red brilliance as comparedwith the numerous other heavenly bodies.

The Ancient Romans christened it “Mars”, the name of theirGod of War

One of the most enduring myths about Mars is that intelligentlife could be found there. This apparently started with thedescription of “canals” on the surface of Mars by GiovanniSchiaparelli, a nineteenth-century Italian astronomer. This wasexpanded on by Percival Lowell, an American astronomer, whotheorized that a Martian civilization had built canals there.

In the 1990’s there was a claim that a "face" on the planet thatwas imaged by the Viking orbiter in 1976 was a monument leftby an ancient civilization. More recent MGS images haveshown that it is merely an effect of lighting on a martian mesa.

Mars is the favourite extraterrestrial body for cinematic andother casting as being the main threat for alien invasion of ourplanet. H.G. Wells started this trend in 1898 in his “The Warof the Worlds”.

This book is not about that kind of life. It is instead about thepossibility, or even likelihood, that life exists even now justbelow the surface of Mars, not as intelligent multicelled aliensbut as microbes that have been existing there for perhapsbillions of years in tune with an environment that is consideredhostile or extreme to us but which, to them, would be as normalas a tropical environment is to us.

But what are the realities of Mars and the probability of therebeing any putative life there as pieced together from the variousremote readings sent back by the various orbiters, landers androvers of the last half century or so?

Here is a brief outline of the characteristics of Mars that arerelevant to life as we know it. These characteristics were piecedtogether from data gathered by the various missions thattargeted Mars. However, during the past 8 years or so the MarsExploration Rovers campaign of NASA/JPL has provided alarge body of data that, in some cases, significantly modifiesthe older picture of Mars. How this could affect the currentmartian paradigm is dealt with in later chapters.

Mars is one of the 9 planets in our Solar System. Mercury isthe one nearest to the sun, Venus is the second nearest, Earthis the third and Mars is the fourth.

Mars is quite similar to Earth in a number of respects. Itsperiod of rotation and the inclination of its axis as it rotates aresimilar to Earth's and its density is comparable with, but lessthan Earth’s. Mars' atmosphere is significantly less dense thanEarth’s.

The inclination of Mar’s axis (24 degrees) results in regularly-changing polar caps and dust storms and gives rise to annualseasons, that are somewhat similar to Earth’s. However, thedifference between Winter and Summer is more extreme onMars due to the greater eccentricity of the Martian orbit andMars experiences significant seasonal differences in the amountof sunlight impacting its surfaces during a year.

The distance of Mars from the Sun ranges from 128.4 millionmiles to 154.7 million miles. Mars receives 40 percent more

sunlight during its southern Summer, when nearest the Sun,than during its southern Winter, when the Sun is most distant..

Mars has 2 natural satellites, Phobos and Deimos, as comparedwith Earth’s single moon. Mars is a geologically complexplanet with scars of numerous craters, huge extinct volcanoes,an enormous rift valley and dried up remnants of ancient riverbeds. Mars has a very thin atmosphere, predominantlycomposed of carbon dioxide.

The usual given composition of the martian atmosphere is 95% CO2, 2.7% N2 and 1.3% O2. Compare this with the currentgiven composition of the Earth’s atmosphere at 0.3% CO2,78% N2, 21% O2 and 1.7% CH4.

Mar’s surface temperature varies from -194 to 80 degreesFahrenheit. Mar’s rotational period or day is only 37 minuteslonger than Earth's. Prior to the last decade there was anoverwhelming presumption that liquid water could not possiblyexist on the surface of Mars.

Based on the proliferation of life on Earth it has been proposedthat habitability of a planet by life, as we know it, depends ona number of factors. Liquid water at the surface is thepreeminent factor which also presupposes that the planet shouldlie in a habitable zone (the Goldilocks zone) in relation to thedistance from its sun that proscribes the possibility of existenceof liquid water at the surface.

The current paradigm holds that only ice, perhaps mixed withdust, can exist on the surface of Mars at the present time, notliquid water.

Another factor lacking on Mars is the presence of a reasonablythick atmosphere to provide protection against small meteoritebombardments and against the deleterious effects of the solarwind as well as to provide enough atmospheric pressure toprevent ice at the surface from sublimating into a gaseousstate.

In addition it is thought that Mars is geologically inactive andso there is no recycling of minerals between its core and thesurface, thereby restricting the availability of such minerals foruse by living organisms.

Mars therefore has at least three strikes going against it in thehabitability stakes.

However, satellite imagery suggests that certain niches on theplanet may be more habitable than is currently thought possible.E.g. there have apparently been strong flows of liquid wateron the surface evidenced by satellite images and otherobservations. It therefore may be more habitable than thescientific number crunching might suggest.

The dominant mainstream position is that it is unclear if lifeever took hold on Mars. The Viking landers includedexperiments for detecting microorganisms in Martian soil.There were apparently positive results based on the pre launchprotocols but these were later deemed inconclusive.

A reanalysis of that Viking data, in light of current knowledgethat extremely hardy forms of life exist on Earth, has suggestedthat the Viking LR tests might have indeed identified life onMars but this is still a very hotly debated topic.

In addition, organic compounds and associated objectsresembling microbes have been found in the meteorite,ALH84001, which has been generally acknowledged to havecome from Mars. It is still debatable if these compounds andobjects are really signs of primitive life forms on Mars.

Small quantities of methane and formaldehyde have beenrecently detected by Mars orbiters on a regular basis and it isbeing claimed that these are products of current metabolism ofexisting life on Mars as these chemicals would quickly breakdown in the Martian atmosphere if they were only products ofa long dormant geological process. However there is a strongcounter argument that the presence of these organic chemicalscould just as feasibly be products of what has been interpretedas current low level volcanic activity or even of serpentization.

Thus the question of whether or not there is microbial life onMars has not been definitively settled and remains a hot topicof debate. This book takes the position that there is current lifeand that several of the images sent back by the MER rovers canbe interpreted as showing signs of past or even extant life.

A comparison of some Mars factoids that were generallyaccepted before the MERs mission with what is generallyaccepted today might give some idea of how knowledge onMars has progressed since the MER missions began;

The Maximum surface temperature was thought to be onlyabout 8F; There had been no precipitation for billions of years;Liquid water could not exist on the surface, No carbonatesexisted on the surface and widespread super oxidants made lifeon or near the surface impossible .

Today there is a general realization that: the Martianatmosphere is significantly denser than previously thought;the maximum temperature near the ground at MeridianiPlanum was 97F and, in the summer, near the equator, surfacetemperatures during the day were quite balmy.

Snow has been observed, so too has been a variety of clouds;Frost has been observed; Liquid briny water can and does existon the surface for appreciable lengths of time; and brine meltis the leading candidate as an explanation for the TransientSlope Lineae that have been imaged by orbiters on the sidesof some craters.

In addition, it has not been demonstrated that super oxidantscan kill microbes protected by antioxidants or by a dust or rocksurface cover. Numerous studies have also shown that severalearth microbes can exist for long periods in experimentalgrowth chambers that simulate the harshest presumptive Marsenvironmental conditions.

1.3: The Viking LR experimentsDr. Gilbert V. Levin is the American microbiologist whoarguably discovered that life existed near the surface of Marsin 1976 through the use of his Labelled Release (LR)experiment that looked for microbial mediated chemicalreactions in NASA’s Viking Mission to Mars.

There were two Viking landing sites some 4,000 miles apartand the LR returned evidence of living microorganisms at bothsites as determined by pre-test protocols. The results werehowever later deemed inconclusive by NASA primarily becausethe results of the separate Gas Chromatography MassSpectrometry (GCMS) experiments had failed to find evidenceof organic chemicals in the soil at the Viking sites.

The 1976 Viking LR results had 3 apparently insurmountableobstacles to deal with that together indicated that there was astrong likelihood that there could be no extant life just belowthe surface of Mars. These presumptive factors were; 1) therewere no organic chemicals on Mars because of the presence oftheoretical superoxides that would destroy them; 2) thepresence of liquid water at or near the surface was presumedto be an impossibility, and; 3) life as we know it could not existin the very hostile environment of Mar’s surface.

The inability to demonstrate organic chemicals on Mars (withthe exception of Methane and Formaldehyde) prompted severalscientists to seek to explain the Viking LR results as havingbeen caused by chemical reactions between the LR nutrientsand unspecified theoretical oxidants in the soil.

However, some researchers are now producing evidence thatorganic matter is likely to be present there.

Research by Navarro-Gonzalez et al. suggested that thermalvolatilization Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry(GCMS), the method used on the Viking missions for detectionof organics, could have itself led to the destruction of anytrace amounts of organic matter present in the sample.

In the Viking GCMS studies, Martian soil was vaporized tobreak up organic molecules and the resultant gases and volatileswere analyzed. Water and Carbon dioxide were the onlyaccepted products of the vaporization while traces ofchloromethane and dichloromethane, that were also found,were considered to be terrestrial hitch hiking contaminants eventhought the controls had shown no evidence of these chemicalsat the levels found.

The Phoenix Lander in 2007 discovered perchlorate at itslanding site in Martian Arctic soil. Since then Gonzalez et alhave shown that when Mars-like soils from the Atacama Desertcontaining measured amounts of organic carbon are mixed with1% magnesium perchlorate and heated, nearly all the organicspresent are decomposed to water and carbon dioxide, but asmall amount is chlorinated, forming small amounts ofchloromethane and dichloromethane at 500°C, therebysuggesting that the Viking GCMS results could be explainedby the presence of perclorates in the soil and was not necessarilydue to lack of organics.

They developed a chemical kinetics model to predict the degreeof oxidation and chlorination of organics in the Viking oven.This led to a reinterpretation of the Viking results whichsuggests  that  at  ≤0.1%  perchlorate  there  could  have  beenbetween 1.5–6.5 ppm of organic carbon at landing site 1 andbetween 0.7–2.6 ppm of organic carbon at landing site 2.

Relatively recent work has also indicated that Perclorates aremetabolized by some anaerobic microbes which also produceOxygen in the dark. One such microbe is Dechloromonas sp.

Recent work by Shkrob and Chemerisov and Shkrob et al.,suggested that active removal processes are taking place thatcould also partially explain the conclusion that the martiansurface is depleted of organics, as well as the production of themethane detected in the martian atmosphere.

Several simulation studies on the likelihood of liquid waterremaining for appreciable periods on Mars’ surface haveindicated that liquid water can indeed form and persist there.

Similarly, there have been several studies which haveconcluded that many earth microbes could survive for longperiods under Martian environmental conditions.

It therefore seems that all the premises under which the VikingLR results were deemed inconclusive have been essentially putto rest.

In 1997 Dr. Levin published his conclusion that the LR hadindeed discovered living microorganisms on the Red Planet.Levin also published a paper in 2011 which dealt with theramifications of a sterile Mars. The abstract of that paper meritsbeing reproduced below.

The seldom considered ramifications of a sterile Mars areexplored. Very much is now known about the environment onMars. Herein, the individual and collective environmentalparameters are examined with particular consideration of thosethat might be inimical to life as we know it, or as mightreasonably be assumed to be so to alien life.

It is shown that no single measurement or combination of themprecludes the ability of Mars to support even a wide number ofterrestrial microbial species, let alone the likely greatertolerance and/or adaptability of possible alien life forms.

Some yet unknown factor or combination of factors would haveto be responsible for Mars’ failure to generate life or tosuccessfully harbor viable forms received from space. SinceMars is so Earth-like, the red planet’s sterility could deliver afatal blow to the growing concept of a cosmic BiologicImperative, and would raise the daunting prospect that Earthis a unique or a very rare habitat.

For argument’s sake, if one accepts that the balance of evidencemight now be on the side of a presumption that Levin did findlife on Mars in 1976, what are the consequences of thisacceptance?

Shouldn’t the MER rovers, that are capable of resolvingdiscrete particles of about 100 microns diameter, have seentextures and other signs, at least in the near subsurface, thatresemble textures of life, especially since it seems that thebalance of the evidence now favours a small but observablewater cycle on Mars?

My view is that the rovers have indeed sent back several imagesthat show such textures and forms but that they have all beenauthoritatively interpreted as fines or quaint rocks or ignoredaltogether.

The remaining chapters of this ebook show or discuss a numberof examples of such fabrics, textures and forms, from the MERimagery, that suggest that there is a distinct possibility thatLevin might have indeed found life on Mars in 1976.

1.4; The MER roversThe Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission is an ongoingrobotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit andOpportunity, exploring Mars. It began in 2003 with thelaunching of the two rovers MER-A, Spirit and Mer-B,Opportunity, to explore the Martian surface.

The mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program,which includes three previous landers: the two Viking landersin 1976 and the Mars Pathfinder probe in 1997. The missionis managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)which designed, built, and is operating the rovers.

The MER mission was to search for and characterize a widerange of rocks and soils that were expected to hold clues to pastwater activity on Mars. Included amongst the scientificobjectives of the Mars Exploration Rover mission were thefollowing that have some relevance to the subject of this book:

· Search for and characterize a variety of rocks and soils thathold clues to past water activity.

· Determine the distribution and composition of minerals,rocks, and soils surrounding the landing sites.

· Determine what geologic processes have shaped the martianterrain and influenced its chemistry.

· Search for iron-containing minerals, and identify andquantify relative amounts of specific mineral types that containwater or were formed in water, such as iron-bearing carbonates.

· Search for geological clues to the environmental conditionsthat existed when liquid water was present on the surface ofMars.

· Assess whether or not those environments were conduciveto life (as we know it on Earth).

Opportunity and Spirit landed on Mars about 3 weeks apart inJanuary 2004 and since then numerous images have beenrelayed back to Earth, along with other scientific data capturedon the Microscopic Imager (MI) and the Pancam scientificcameras. In addition, other operational images weretransmitted to Earth from the Navigation and Hazard Camerason a practically daily basis. All the images were madeavailable to anyone on Earth interested in the project. Well over¼ million images from Spirit and Opportunity have been postedso far on the NASA/JPL Rovers website.

On May 1, 2009, Spirit became stuck in soft soil on Mars. Aftermonths of attempts to get it back on track,NASA /JPL finallygave up trying to regain contact with the rover in May 2011bringing the elapsed mission time for the MerA segment toover 25 times the original planned mission duration.

Opportunity, however, is still roving and making morediscoveries about geology and past water at Meridiani planum.

NASA proposes to conduct a number of other missions toaddress whether life ever existed on Mars. The emphasis willbe on determining if the Martian environment was ever suitablefor life. Life, as we understand it, requires water, hence thehistory of water on Mars is critical to finding out if the Martianenvironment was ever conducive to life. The Mars ExplorationRovers do not have the ability to detect life directly but they

do offer important information on the habitability of the martianenvironment in the planet's history through the study of existingrocks.

The Rovers enjoyed a full measure of success in quicklyachieving the objectives of the mission. There were severaldiscoveries of a variety of key minerals in the rocks examinedwhich strongly suggested that water once flowed in theMeridiani region where Opportunity operated.

Fig 4.1 is a map of Mars, courtesy NASA/JPL, showing wherethe Mars landers or Rovers were or are located on the Martiansurface. It includes the positions of the Viking landers, thePathfinder rover, the ill-fated Beagle II lander, the MER roversand Curiosity’s planned landing site.

The Rovers were well equipped to conduct their Geologicalmission of finding clues to the presence of ancient water onMars. The equipment they carried for their scientific assayswere:

The Science instruments or the Athena Package:

The dual (high resolution) panoramic camera)

The Microscopic Imager (MI)

The Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (mini-TES)

The Mossbauer Spectrometer (MB)

The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS)

The Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and the Magnet arrays

The other operational cameras. were;

The dual front hazcams (hazard detection / avoidance cameras)

The dual rear hazcams

The dual navcams (navigational cameras)

The science instruments were capable of identifying thevarious minerals and rocks along the rovers’ traverses of themartian terrain as well as the salts and other compounds thatmight contain bound water and thus fulfill their main mandate.The instruments were also capable of determining suchenvironmental parameters as temperatures, wind speeds andrelative humidity around the rovers.

There were however no instruments in the rovers’ arsenal thatwere capable of directly identifying current free water on Marsor even directly identifying free ice on the surface or identifyingorganic moities. This was not their remit.

The MI was not capable of providing images that could resolvefine differences between inanimate dust and microbial sporesor individual cells in the size ranges of typical earth microbesand thus could not definitively determine if putative microbialfabrics might or might not be present in its images.

None of the MER spectrometers are capable of identifyingminerals or chemical moities at a depth of more than 300microns below the surface of any object examined. Thus withan average diameter of blueberries of say 3 mm (or 3000microns), the spectrometers could not definitively identifywhat constituted 73 percent of the volume of these smallobjects. With larger berries, of say 5 mm average diameter,the volume unavailable for examination jumps to 83%.

Of course with larger rocks which were amenable to the use ofthe RAT, the instruments could probe further, eg, to 300microns below the depth of the RATTED hole from the surface.

In adddition, the spectrometers can not target individual berriesfor examination and scientists have to rely on theoreticalmodels to make approximate estimates of berry content.

Indeed, there have been papers presented by reputable scientiststhat claim that at Meridiani the haematite dust cover pervadesall surfaces, thus, even though it is possible that the berriescould be entirely composed of haematite as is claimed, theinstruments can not substantiate this definitively.

That claim that the berries are totally made up of haematite istherefore an educated guess only and not an actual directmeasurement of the haematite within the berry itself.

Fig 4-1; map of Mars showing landing sites - ex NASA

CHAPTER 2; ExtremophilesExtremophiles are living organisms that thrive under harshenvironmental conditions which would normally be fatal fortypical organisms on Earth. Such conditions include extremelow or high temperatures or pH’s or salinity or pressure; livingin toxic environments, eg. In arsenic laced solutions; living innuclear reactors; living in microwaves, etc.

Most extremophiles are micro-organisms such as archeae andbacteria since higher organisms generally are less adaptive towide variations from the norm in their natural environment. Insome cases extremophile metabolism thrives on the exoticvariation in environmental conditions; in other situations, thereis adaptive behavior such as metabolic diapause or formationof resistant resting structures, e.g, endospores. Upper limits ofexistence for carbon based lifeforms appear to be about 150degrees Celsius, based upon the inherent thermal stabilities ofthe amino acids and polypeptides that are essential to themanufacture of DNA.

Even though it is true that most extremophiles aremicroorganisms there are a number of multicellular organismsthat may also be classed as extremophiles. These includeTardigrades or water bears, small animals that have been foundto be able to tolerate the vacuum of space and can exist in adehydrated state for months.

Extremophiles are thought to have been some of the earliestlifeforms on earth, since such early organisms would have hadto be adapted to harsh conditions, at least in comparison topresent day environments. It may be possible that someExtremophiles may exist on other bodies in the solar system,such as Jupiter's moon, Europa or on Mars.

Certain types of bacteria thrive in hot waters. Most livingbacteria and organisms are killed by simple pasteurization atabout 63 to 72 C since such temperatures typically denaturesthe proteins that are part of all living membranes and also theenzymes that catalyze biochemical reactions. When cellmembranes, enzyme or other cell protein structures aredamaged, in one or more severe or critical ways, cells die.

Bacteria that live and survive in hot, steamy waters andundersea vents are called thermophiles. Thermophiles haveheat-protective proteins that allow them to do this.Thermophiles can be isolated from areas in and around steamvents, geysers, mud pots and hot springs. In the United Statesthermophiles thrive in multiple steamy sites in YellowstonePark in northwestern Wyoming.

In the oceans and seas "black smokers" of sea vents spew outdark, hot minerals and sulfur deposits which support largenumbers of thermophilic bacteria and associated organisms.These special bacteria are members of the ancient bacterialkingdom named "Archaea".

The modus operandi of thermophiles is that they have proteinsthat are heat-resistant and are not denatured when heated tohigh temperatures.

Thermus aquaticus , a typical thermophile, has a polymeraseenzyme which can be heated to 70 °C and cooled multipletimes and can still function after 20 or 30 such cycles.

Over the past few years there have been a large number ofScientific papers reporting on various newly discoveredcapabilities of an ever expanding list of extremophiles.

Chloracidobacterium thermophilum is a new genus and speciesof bacteria that was discovered by workers from the Universityof Pennsylvania and described in Science July 27, 2007.

Recently, NASA reported on a newly found group ofextremophile that they called "arsenophiles". Arsenophilesisolated from Mono Lake in California, substitute arsenic forphosphorous in critical energy transfer molecules.

Some extremophiles tolerate near freezing temperatures andlow levels of oxygen and can grow in the absence of organicfood. Under these conditions their metabolism is driven by theoxidation of iron from olivine, a common volcanic mineralfound in the rocks of lava tubes. These factors, in the opinionof some researchers, would allow them to thrive in thesubsurface of Mars and other planetary bodies.

Several references are given which demonstrate our everexpanding knowledge of the apparently almost limitlesscapacities of extremophiles.

It was persuasively argued in the past that the ambientconditions on Mars were too extreme, compared with Earth’s,to allow any life as we know it to thrive or even live there.Today it is becoming more and more evident that severalextremophiles exist and thrive under even more extremeconditions than those adduced for Mars and that this argumentis no longer tenable.

CHAPTER 3; The significance of waterWater is an essential medium for the existence of all livingorganisms on Earth. Life on Earth appears to be inextricablylinked with the presence of water at some stage of itsdevelopment. Thus all of the extremophiles found so far havehad water associated with some aspect of their life cycles. Thelinkage of Life with water is so pervasive that it is generallyaccepted that wherever one finds water it will be teeming withat least microbial life.

But is the same thing true for Mars or any other extraterrestrialbody? Several scientists think so but the truth or otherwise ofthat aphorism has not been rigorously tested outside of Eartheven though some meteorites, that have been accepted as havingoriginated on Mars, have been shown to have fossil likestructures and biochemicals in them that strongly suggest thatlife was present in the rocks from which they were blasteduntold millions or billions of years ago.

It is generally accepted that billions of years ago water floodedparts of theMartian surface and gouged enormous floodchannels there but that most of the water that remained nowlies frozen at the poles or covered by dust. Mars is now, almostby definition, a cold and dessicated place. But there is evidencethat liquid water is flowing someplace on Mars even now

Indeed, there has been a deluge of observations by NASAorbiters and landers as well as the Mars Express orbiter andnumerous findings from scientific research that strongly suggestthat it is almost certain that liquid water can and does exist atthe surface of Mars and that the paradigm has changed. .

Some of the observations or Mars simulation chamber researchresults that indicate that liquid water currently exists on Marsare summarized below. Links to the relevant news stories andpapers are provided in the references section of this book toallow those who might wish to further examine the abovestatement to see the source material.

In the late 1990’s the high-resolution camera on NASA's MarsGlobal Surveyor (MGS) recorded narrow gullies meanderingdown the walls of some craters and many researchers surmisedthat they were the result of water periodically oozing out ofcracks in the rock and trickling downslope.

During the recent NASA Phoenix mission, it was noticed thatlittle blobs were clinging to the craft's landing struts and it wasargued that they might be liquid water droplets. However thedebate on this is ongoing.

The Hirise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)captured dark rivulets forming, growing, and then fading in theplanet's southern hemisphere. These Transient Slope Lineae(TSLs) have been explained as being formed by brinescontaining enough salt to depress their freezing points by morethan 100°F (50° to 60°C).

Fig 6-4 shows a typical TSL. Unlike the gullies seen by MarsGlobal Surveyor, these new finds occur only along sunward-facing slopes and only form during midsummer.

Below are just a few examples of the titles of a small samplingof the large outpouring of recent releases and new researchfindings which strongly suggest that liquid water currentlyexists on Mars, even if only in relatively small amounts;

- Martian fog study finds thick haze “diamond dust”

- NASA lander adds to evidence of red planet’s water cycle.

- Spectral evidence for liquid water on Mars.

- NASA spacecraft reveals dramatic changes in Mar’satmosphere.

- Wetter Mars atmosphere shakes up old climate models.

- Mars surprises - atmosphere is supersaturated with watervapour.

- Mars climate sounder confirms a martian weather prediction.

- Is water flowing on Mars?

- Currently active flow features on walls of Newton crateron Mars.

- Subsurface water and clay mineral formation during theearly history of Mars.

- Mountains and buried ice on Mars.

- Slope streaks could be brine runoffs from overnight frostdeposition on salty rocks.

- Evidence in favour of small amounts of ephemeral andtransient water during alteration at Meridiani planum.

- Large amounts of water ice found underground on Mars.

- Salty soil can suck water out of the atmosphere; Could ithappen on Mars?

At Gusev, studies on a time lapse series of spectra of saltsexposed by Spirit’s bad wheel and as a consequence of theimmobilization of Spirit at Samander point, indicated that waterof crystallization was progressively lost to the atmosphere afterthat exposure.

The studies above, as reported in papers in LPSC 2011 and2012, described attributes in the pancam and apxs spectra ofsalts released to the surface by Spirit’s dragging wheel inColumbia hills that indirectly indicated the presence of water.These attributes were correlated with the amount of water heldloosely in or on the salts. It therefore appears that water wasreleased from some hydrated iron salts during a relatively shortperiod of exposure to the atmosphere. Thus it may be possiblethat the water on some of these salt species might be looselybound and available to putative microbes below the surface.

When one reads and follows the links on the above news storiesor scientific papers there seems to be a clear indication that thegame has already changed. More and more scientists seem tobe willing to accept that the results of Mars exploration of thepast decade or so is painting a picture of a different Mars to theone envisaged in previous decades.

So what is the science that underpins the former presumptionthat water cannot exist on the surface of Mars at the presenttime or the presumptive current one that it can exist ephemerallyand sporadically? The major basis is the physics of the triple(or eutectic) point for existence of pure liquid water in anenvironment such as Mars.

A diagram for the existence of one or other of the three phasesof water, i.e. water ice, liquid water or water vapour, underdifferent temperatures and pressures, is given in fig 6.2. It is

adapted from one in Gil Levin’s paper “The Viking LRexperiment and life on Mars”. The diagram indicates underwhich combination of temperature and atmospheric pressureeither of the phases would exist.

The normal range of temperatures and pressures on Mars areindicated in the figure. The diagram indicates that under normalmartian temperatures and pressures pure ice on the surface ofMars would sublimate directly into water vapour withoutpassing through a liquid phase. This is the most likely commonsituation on the Martian surface. However, it has long beenknown that several salts (including the perchlorates that werefound at the phoenix site) lower the triple point and thereforeextends the lower end of the temperature range over whichliquid water could exist on Mars.

In addition, recent research has suggested that the normalatmospheric pressure on Mars may be a few times higher thanwhat it has been adduced to have been previously. Indeed,Levin has pointed out (personal communication) that duringthe six years of monitoring by the Viking instruments theatmospheric pressure never fell below 6.1 mb.

Also, the atmospheric pressure in deep craters is likely to besignificantly higher than has been experienced at currentlanding sites.

Fig 6.1 also shows that at Meridiani planum the temperaturehas often exceeded the expected Mars range of temperaturestherefore also extending the possibility that liquid water couldexist transiently on the surface there.

The science therefore supports the probability that water existsat Meridiani and a number of other places on Mars’ surface,perhaps even diurnally.

Indeed, John Moores, a planetary scientist at York Universityin Canada, indicated in a study which demonstrated theexistence of “diamond dust” type fog on Mars by the Spiritrover (linked in the references section here) that;

The atmosphere is thin on Mars and there is nothing to keepin the heat overnight so the ground cools off very quickly. Theair close to the ground gets colder and more water vapor in theatmosphere condenses into ice crystals and the fog gets thicker.

The fog starts closer to the ground and rises in height over time,so the cloud gets thicker and thicker and higher and higher asthe night goes on. Eventually an icy haze begins to shower theground with a light sprinkling of snowlike particles. The showeris not quite snowfall but is perhaps more akin to the "diamonddust" that falls from the skies on some cold nights in Earth'sArctic regions.

About 2.5 microns of frost coats the Martian surface by thetime the sun begins to rise in the morning and some of that icylayer then sublimates directly to water vapour but some likelypenetrates the soil and becomes part of the subsurface groundice. This implies that dynamic hydrological processes arecurrently at work on Mars and there is a reservoir of water inthe atmosphere interacting with subsurface water on a dailybasis.

Fig 6.3. is a diagram I made to represent what might constitutean ongoing water cycle on Mars.

At night the atmosphere is supersaturated with water.

That water vapour descends to the cold surface and forms alayer of frost (which has been captured in various images at theViking sites and at Meridiani planum by the lander/rovers).

With daylight, the atmosphere warms up and initially the frostlayer melts providing small amounts of liquid water that wetsthe soil and perhaps some of which gets trapped in theinterstices of the soil or gets absorbed onto salts. Later in theday the water left at the surface sublimates directly to watervapour as the upper atmospheric column warms up. The cyclerepeats diurnally.

But what is the ground truth on the possible existence of wateron the surface of Mars as seen by the rovers, Opportunity andSpirit, and even Viking and Phoenix?

I am proposing that several images have indeed shown clearsigns of the existence of such water but that science hasconvincingly explained these signs as being merely theexpression of the properties of “fines” i.e. very fine particlesof the regolith concentrated in certain areas and giving theimpression of water flows down crater sides, puddles, etc.

I think that the channels etc., that look as if water was recentlythere, actually reflects reality and the remainder of this chapterwill attempt to demonstrate this using a sample of these imagesto allow readers to judge for themselves . Some of the imagesare 3D anaglyphs for which the reader will need to use red andblue anaglyph 3-D glasses.

Chapter 5 in this book shows images that suggest that liquidsubsurface water was disturbed by rover tracks or other means

and left “mud” or stains on the disturbed surfaces after therelease and evaporation of that water by rover action.

Only a few of the numerous examples are shown here becauseof space and time constraints. Readers may follow the linksin the references to get a more in-depth look at the originalsof the images provided. The following photosites, maintainedby regular posters on the Marsroverblog community, havemany examples of composite, 3D and other images from theMER rovers that show features in MER images that might besigns of liquid flows on Mars or may be related to life and itsputative modification of its environment.

LWS’ smugmug photopage;

Hortonheardawho’s Flickr page and

Mann’s smugmug photopage

The URL’s of the photosites above are listed in the references.

Fig 6-2; Triple point for pure water; ex Chemical Rubber Handbook

Fig 6-1; T emperatures at Meridiani (max/min), by sol - ex Nasa

Fig 6-3; A basic atmospheric water cycle model for mars

Fig 6-4 Transient slope lineae (TSLs) on Mars ex NASA

Clouds, frost, ice etc

The images on the following pages show water in either its iceor gaseous phases as taken by one or other of the MER Rovers.

Fig 6.5 shows clouds imaged by Opportunity. During the MERmission several pictures of clouds have been taken. Theseclouds have always been interpreted as being composed of tinycrystals of ice, not water vapour.

Fig 6.6 shows an early morning frost at one of the Viking sitesin 1976. Both Opportunity and Spirit, as well as Phoenix, havealso managed to capture images of frost on their instrumentpanels or the ground on a number of occasions.

Fig 6.7 shows a trench dug by the phoenix lander in whichwater ice was inferentially identified on the basis of its visualappearance and the fact that it sublimated quickly afterexposure and that, based on the temperature in the environmentof phoenix, that it could not have been CO2 ice. Phoenix, likethe MER rovers, had no means of directly and definitivelyidentifying ice using the available payload.

Fig 6.8 is one of my favourite images. It shows a scene inwhich reflections appear to be emanating from what looks liketranslucent channels. I interpret the image as showing lightlydusted ice in the micro channels at the surface.

There are several images captured by Opportunity that showwhat appears to be very similar situations with putative ice inmicrochannels that often have an appearance of being damp orwet and that follow similar paths to those one would expectchannels produced by very small nightly water flows to exhibit.These present themselves as dust engulfed ice in the day.

Fig 6-5; Clouds over Meridiani, Mars; sol 756, Opportunity

Fig 6-6 Frost at Viking site. - White balanced NASA image

Fig 6-7; trench at Phoenix site showing exposed ice

Fig 6-8; Translucent? microchannels suggestive of Ice; sol 658

Bounce, Puddles.

When Opportunity bounced down on Meridiani planum fromspace one of the objects its air bags landed on and dislodgedfrom its resting place was a meteorite rock named “Bounce” .

Fig 6.9 is a colour composite of Bounce. If that rock was onEarth there would be no argument that the “stain” that isprominent on its surface must have been caused by a liquid.On Mars it is a different story. In my view, the rock clearlyshows a situation where it was dislodged from intimate contactwith a near surface environment where liquid brine was present.The microseconds of the action allowed the liquid to splashonto one side of the rock and stain its surface and then evaporateinto the thin atmosphere. I think it is a clear sign of liquid waterhaving been present for a very short time on the surface.

Fig 6.10 is another image that shows the effect of the impactof the airbags on the Mars’ soil. Here, an area where the airbagsbounced and left their unmistakeable marks imprinted on thesoil are shown. The surficial berries were pressed into the soilbut most importantly the exact imprints of the stitches of theair bags are clearly seen on the affected surface. The mostreasonable explanation for this is that the soil was fluidized ormade muddy as a result of the force of the airbags.

Fig 6.11 shows a close up of the muddy appearance of anotherlanding bag mark.

Fig 6.12 is an example of a puddle that MerB encountered andimaged on sol 97. On sol 89 MerB imaged another apparentpuddle but a closer look suggested that it might have been ablowhole of some sort where excess water was forcibly ejectedthrough a hole at the surface.

Fig 6-9; The meteorite “bounce” with stain, sol 65

Fig 6-10; airbag marks made on landing, sol 52

Fig 6.12; 3D of puddle at Meridiani, sol 97

Fig 6.11 I m prints left by MerB’s airbags, sol 10

Microchannels, Mud;

From very early after Opportunity’s landing in Eagle cratersmall, sinuous channels could be seen, seemingly flowing downbetween rocks but apparently populated by dust only. The dusthowever looked damp but this damp look was interpreted asbeing due to the extreme fineness of the particulates of whichit was composed. MRB regulars call them microchannels.

Most of the images in the following few pages showmicrochannels from Meridiani.

The microchannels give the distinct impression of channels cutout by fluid flows from either mini acquifers or from otherelevated sources. They have an appearance of being visually“damp” and are often seen (in 3D) to be below the level of thesurrounding rock or soil surface.

Fig.6.13, 6.14, 6.15, 6.16, and 6.18 show a few of the numerousmicrochannels encountered by Opportunity. They all show thecharacteristics described above.

Fig 6.15, 6.16 and 6.18 show another characteristic of themicrochannels of Meridiani. Opportunity’s wheels usuallyappear to express and transport mud which retains a muddylook and conformation when they roll over areas in whichmicrochannels are found.

Fig 6.15 shows a “mud ball” that was presumably taken up byOpportunity’s wheel and deposited in a typical smooth blob onthe surface of a rock. The other two images show mud pickedup and compressed by the rover wheels as they passed over themicro channels.

Fig 6.17 shows an apparent muddy goo sticking on the surfaceof a rock broken, overturned and exposed by Spirit.

It may be recalled that one of the first observations by a NASAscientist on the mud like nature of the airbag marks and otherearly tracks made by Opportunity was that “it looks like mudbut it can’t be mud”. The phenomenon was later ascribed toextremely small amounts of water being wicked up to thesubsurface by capillary action through the tiny soil intersticesand forming what appeared to be the mud which could not bemud.

It should be emphasized that mud is a material that results fromthe activities of microbes on wet or damp soil particles, humus,etc., and exhibits stickiness, cohesiveness, plasticity and otherwell known properties. Mud cannot exist in dry conditions.

The putative martian mud appears to exhibit all the essentialvisual properties of mud from the images produced byOpportunity and Spirit.

I think that the images above show that there is indeed mud orsomething which looks, tracks, and puddles exactly like mudon the surface of Mars.

NASA was also puzzled by the apparent anomalous strongcohesiveness of the surface layer of the soil.

I think that the cohesiveness noted by NASA might be partlydue to the activities of putative microorganisms present justunder the surface during periods when liquid water is present.

Fig 6.14 A typical Meridiani microchannel, sol 2667

Fig 6.13; stream emerging from “aquifer”, s122, MerB

Fig 6.15; mud dropped from MerB’s wheel onto evaporite rock, s314

Fig 6.16 Mud with berries in microchannel

Fig 6.17; Sticky mud on a upturned rock surface; MerA, sol 820

Fig 6.18; Mud tracked by MerB to pavement rock, s175

Berry matrix in dark streak area of Victoria crater

When Opportunity approached Victoria crater it had the benefitof satellite images that showed areas that appeared to be darkstreaks emanating from the crater rim and dissipating down theapron of the crater. Opportunity made what appeared to be aquite cursory examination of one of these dark streaks and thenmoved on without, as far as I know, fully explaining whatcaused the dark streaks (See fig. 7.19).

Fig 6.19 and Fig 6.20 are crops from colour composites madefrom pancam images taken in the dark streak area of Victoria.

The major difference between these images and most otherimages of soil surfaces that Opportunity has visited is thecolouration and liquid appearance of the matrix from which theberries are always seen to emerge. Here the matrix is purplishdark and has the distinct appearance of being a fluid. In mostother cases the matrix appears dry.

Could it be that the dark streak areas appear to be differentbecause of an enhanced amount of moisture in that area andperhaps the area might be ideal for exploitation by putative nearsurface microbial mat organisms that might provide theanomalous colouration?

The other area examined by Opportunity that showedanomalous images of the berry matrix and the berriesthemselves was the popcorn berry area in Endurance crater.The berry matrix was also of a similar dark colouring and theberries themselves showed various phases of covering by whatappears to be light evaporite material.

Fig 6.19; Rock , showing overturned surface with berries, s1143

Fig 6.20; Berry matrix in dark streak area, Victoria, s1151

Pecularities of distribution of berries on the Meridianievaporite pavement rocks .

The Meridiani evaporite rock surfaces are usually heavilypopulated by berries. In practically all cases the berries areassociated with cracks on the surface and always emanate froma dark matrix on the rock. In addition they are never seen to beclumped together on the pavement rocks and always formdiscrete groups on the surface of the rocks. The very distinctivepattern of distribution of the berries on these rocks has beenexplained as being largely due to wind movements.

Two interesting patterns of distribution of berries on rocks areshown in Figs 6.21 and Fig 6.22. Fig 6.21 is a 3D anaglyph ofa scene imaged by the twin Navcam cameras . It clearly showswhat appears to be predominant distribution of berries alongthe sides of channels cut by a flowing liquid medium. Fig 6.22is another 3D anaglyph from sol 2673. This Pancam imageshows the berries concentrated on dark areas of the rock. It alsoshows mini flow channels that seem to restrict the populationof berries to the sides of the channels and several cup-like clearobjects, predominantly in the channels, that appear to have beenholders for berries. NB such repetitive objects are possibly biomarkers

Figs 6.23 and 6.24 shows another attribute of the pavementrocks that might be associated with water. Fig 6.23 is an MIof the ratted surface of an evaporate rock taken on sol 156. Itshows the typical Meridiani SODs with their chaotic shapesthat are arguably produced by the salts in the rock losing waterdue to the heat and various other effects of the ratting process.The rock is relatively soft and yet the resistance to ratting was

unexpectedly high. Such a reaction is understood to becharacteristic of high water content during the lapidiary process.

Fig 6.24 seeks to illustrate significant changes in a Meridianievaporite rock surface that occurred after the hole was left for3 days after initial ratting on sol 546. The changes in the RAThole evoked an official comment from NASA that they werecaused by gusts of winds which deposited the crud seen in thesol 549 image. That might indeed be possible but I would liketo present an alternative rationale for the differences seen.

The sol 546 image shows a flat ratted surface characterized bythe presence of a few cracks and very dark areas which mightbe due to the slicing of berries in the evaporite rock matrix.The sol 549 image shows a surface essentially covered withSOD like material and also showing a drastic clearing and“overgrowth”, not covering, of the underlying areas that werevery dark at sol 546. In addition, the sol 549 image does notappear to be a surface filled by passive covering by dry sodsthrough wind movement but of “growth”, from below, throughthe former dark spots, of a coherent layer of sod type material.

Could this be an example of a rapid self healing process by adisturbed surface reacting to the breaching of that surface?Could moisture have been involved in that process? This isnot a singular example.

It is perhaps not too late for Opportunity to test this speculationthrough conducting a simple time lapse examination of someratted holes and monitoring microclimatic wind speeds and dustaccumulation in the vicinity of RATTED holes while atEndurance crater. If a similar situation arises with Curiosity,more in depth studies should be done to determine if thisphenomenon is real.

Fig 6.21; Berries & drip channels on pavement overlooking crater

Fig 6.22; 3D of berries on surface with translucent berry holders; s2673

Fig 6.23; Evaporite rock showing SODs removed by RATTtng, s156

Fig 6.24; Changes on same ratted surface of hole over 3 days

Fluid expressed by MerB tracks

There are several direct signs from the MER library of imagesthat indicate that free liquid water is held in the near subsurfaceof some areas on Mars. None are as clear as the following twoimages sent back by Opportunity.

On sol 1232 MerB’s wheels fortuitously exposed a subsurfaceenvironment that I interpret as containing a liquid brine. Thatbrine quickly evaporated on exposure to the atmosphere but indoing so left a thin layer of its blue coloured constituent saltprecisely and evenly layered over some rocks and soil in thetrack. In addition, it left clear signs of the brine itself absorbedonto the compressed track as well as nearby soil. Fig 6.25 is apancam composite of the sol 1232 images that shows thisphenomenon.

On sol 992 MerB’s track also exposed another Meridianisubsurface that, imo, contained liquid brine. In this casehowever, the images show a much clearer picture of the liquidinvolved and actually suggests that it might have remained onthe surface for a bit longer than in the sol 1232 situation afterits subsurface environment was breached. Here, the remnantsigns of the violet blue brine are clearly seen on the rover tracksfrom the areas where they had erupted as well as on somesmaller foreground areas that look as if the brines were soshallowly placed that the rover’s action resulted in smallamounts of the coloured brine exuding onto the surface leavinglight stains on the compacted soil.

These images are, imho, amongst the clearest MER images thatactually show liquid water’s impact on the surface.

Fig 6.25; Thin salt skein and stain expressed on MerB’s track, sol 1232

Fig 6.26; Stain from evaporating brine released by MerB’s tracks, sol

Conclusions on current water on Mars.

There are numerous experiments that have been carried out inmartian simulation chambers to test the paradigm that liquidwater cannot exist on Mars. None of those experiments havecorroborated that hypothesis. Instead, the evidence is clearthat water brines can indeed exist for extended periods on thesurface of Mars. A sampling of reports on these simulationexperiments are linked in the references on chapter 6.

The relatively recent reports on slope lineae, that have beenchampioned by NASA, also indicates that liquid water flowsin the summer months on some crater slopes on Mars.

It has been suggested that the water in the martian topsoilidentified by the orbital remote readings over Mars (between2 to 15%) is bound in immovable hydroxyl ions. I do not thinkthis is correct as the gusev discovery of salts almost at thesurface, and their subsequent loss of water to the atmosphere,allied with the findings that salts suck moisture from theatmosphere when it is supersaturated, shows clearly that thereis an exchange of water between the atmosphere and theMartian surface.

It seems unlikely that a "regolith cover which has a fairly highthermal inertia" would be enough to protect a cache of moisturefor 3 billion years. This implies a recharge mechanism withinrelatively recent times.

Practically all the visual cues from the pancams point to therecent passage of liquid water on the surface from the verybeginning of the MerB mission.

Our eyes can, on their own, tell the difference between picturesof a dry soil and a wet or damp one as we have a lifetime ofexperience doing this using cues that go beyond reflectance.

It is also true that as frost or ice is warmed it remains at the zerodegree point until it re-acquires the latent heat of fusion of ice.So as long as the pressure is even slightly above the triple pointpressure, there should be at least a brief liquid phase, perhapsfor enough time to form a brine with any salt that is present.

In my view, the images presented in this chapter show strongand consistent signs of current water on Mars. Many of theimages sent back by MerB, and to a lesser extent by Spirit,suggests that the rovers have captured images of the results ofrecent water flows or puddling on Mars and that mud indeedexists at various times and places.

It now seems reasonable to expect that the default positionshould be that water does flow sporadically on the surface ofMars.

However, the question that will be asked is why have therovers, which provided ground truth for well over a decade ofcombined time on the surface of Mars, not found clear andunequivocal signs of liquid water flows on Mars if water isindeed there just under the surface?

I have strugged with this question for the past 8 years and Ithink the answer lies in the fact that all of us have beenconditioned to recognize liquid water only as we see it on earth,as waterfalls, seas, lakes, rain, etc. We do not take into accountthe fact that Mar’s frigid daytime surface environment doesnot allow for such observations.

In my view, the water cycle is a fact but its major aspectgenerally occurs almost always when the rovers are not actively(night times) taking photographs and when it is actuallycounterintuitive to expect liquid water to be on the surface.

In the daytime the rovers however record the omnipresenteffects of the recent presence of water such as, the muds, thecohesive surfaces and the seemingly icy microchannelscascading down crater rock channels, and we say, “it looks likewater but it can’t be water”.

These indications of water are denied as even though they mightfit with what water should look like to our eyes, they go againstwhat we would expect the instruments on the rovers to recordsince these instruments are silent as to if water is there or not.

We seldom reflect that the rover instruments cannot detectcurrent water that might be hidden under just 300 microns ofdusty surfaces. We also do not factor in the information fromthe Orbiters that the surface layers at Meridiani contain up to15% W/V of water equivalent and seek to have our modelslocate all that water onto salts that are interpreted as holdingthe water tightly. We fail to recognize that a soil on earth thatholds 15% of water is a wet one, damp, and often muddy andthat if the Orbiter results are true the answers to the majorquestions that the MERs were sent to solve were right therebefore our eyes from the very beginning when Opportunitydemonstrated the presence of those microchannels mimickingwater on the surface, as well as the muds.

In my view, practically all the images sent back by Opportunitycorroborates the deluge of scientific observations that there isindeed a measurable water cycle ongoing on Mars. The

standard explanation that every image that shows what lookslike water activity must have been due to the presence of dustflows or fines should probably be seen as being born of a needto conform to the expectations of the current paradigm.

If water is indeed there it would allow other explanations forsome of the apparent anomalies we see in the images. Forexample, could we be seeing the current expression of a widearea of past, or even current, stromatolitic growth (Mars style)at Meridiani? Could some of the berries, just below thesurface, be part of an exotic martian climax microflora playinga role in maintaining an alien type of water balance on Mars.

The MerB images and other allied data suggests the followingworking hypothesis on the dynamics of the current state ofwater on Mars to me:-

Mars last had voluminous flowing water a few billion yearsago in the age of catastrophic impacts when its surface mighthave been generally warm and wet.

Since then there has been a relatively steady state, cold andessentially dry environment where there have been occasionalrelatively slight flows of water or brines on the surface.

However, there might have been fairly significant but relativelyshort lasting water flows during the periods of pole shifts whenMars would have experienced periods of higher surfacetemperatures and pressures compared to the present.

The current and other steady state environments would becharacterized by a steady diurnal water cycle involving onlyvery small amounts of water (by earth standards) but which,

over billions of years, has built up and maintains a subsurfaceenvironment in which liquid brines are often present.

That near subsurface environment is maintained separate fromthe martian atmosphere by, inter alia, the activities of endemicmicrobes there. The metabolic products of the putativemicrobes act to bind the surface, producing the strong cohesiveeffect that NASA marvelled at in the early days of the MERmission.

These putative microbes would also provide the conduitsthrough which water vapour enters and leaves the subsurface.

Also contributing to this water balance and conservation arethe salts which bind water somewhat loosely to their micellestructures. It is possible that this water could be made availablefor activities of microbes under certain circumstances. The lossof water at the surface over several days by iron salts at Gusevas reported by the Alian Wang team, suggests that this mightbe possible.

When there are impacts or other activities which lead to abreaching of the surface any liquid brine in the breachedsubsurface quickly evaporates but water of crystallization ofvarious salts may take a bit longer to be lost to the atmosphere.

In the subsurface, especially in the near equatorial summers,brines exist on an ongoing basis. It is this water that producesthe TSL’s and even the dark streaks that the MER rovers haveimaged in several craters visited. The streaks would then bethe result of gradual nightly small flows, hinted at in severalOppy images, that become dark because of the activities ofputative organisms that utilize the damp environment foraspects of their metabolism.

Deeper down in the soil profile there is a posssibility that watercould also exist as ice. This is suggested by the mounds of ice,imaged in craters by orbiters after recent impacts, that persistfor several days. The occurrence of such significant icedeposits is also suggested by the results of the characterizationof water moities by remote imaging from the various satellitesthat have studied Mars over the past few decades.

So yes, I think that the presence of an ongoing significant watercycle on Mars is substantially proven. The current paradigmonly awaits the input of some young brave planetary scientiststo lay it to rest.

CHAPTER 4: The Opportunity BlueberriesSometime before Opportunity landed at Meridiani planum onMars it was predicted by one of the MER principal investigatorsthat it would find haematite in the form of small concretionson the surface. That prophecy came true.

The Meridiani blueberries were seen to dominate the Martiansurface from the first images sent back to earth by Opportunity(MerB). These blueberries were essentially spherical ballsranging in diameter from 1 to 6.6 mms, and were found to besubstantially composed of haematite. They were present inmillons on every surface that MerB examined except the recentCape York surfaces on an Endeavour crater slope which arethemselves similarly dominated by small relatively irregularlyshaped haematitic cobbles.

The almost total cover of all the surfaces at Meridiani visitedby Opportunity, to my mind, had only one parallel on Earth,the total cover of pristine Earth landscapes by vegetation.

However, the MerB blueberries were almost immediatelycharacterized by the scientists as haematite concretions andanalogues were suggested from a number of earth sites, suchas the navajo desert where roughly similar nodules, the moquimarbles, exists.

A number of scientists initially had different ideas about themechanism by which the berries were formed making suchproposals as; ooids, lapilli, impact spherules, Fe-Mn lake bednodules, etc., However, these alternatives were soon silenced.Some of the early papers that suggested an alternativeprovenance for the berries are listed in the references here.

The original theory for the development of the berries was thatthey were formed about 3 billion years or so ago when theMeridiani area was thought to have undergone episodes ofcatastrophic flooding with the eventual formation of largeshallow lakes. As water evaporated from these lakes, sphericalhaematite concretions were formed within rock layers at thelake bottoms by an abiotic chemical process.

Following the total drying out of the area. Meridiani was sweptby winds, meteorite strikes, etc, which left the surface we seetoday with a monolayer of the previously formed berries in adesert pavement which itself ensures that this layer stayed onthe surface and is still there without replenishment after billionsof years because of the extremely hard nature of the greyhaematite of which they are composed.

Soon after the above scenario was proposed it was probablyrecognized that there was not enough evidence to support theancient lake idea since, inter alia, it required the existence ofmillions of years of a surficial lacustrine situation to be credible.

The hypothesis was therefore modified from one large lake toan ancient playa type evaporative situation where evaporationfrom putative less massive underground water sources wouldhave provided the main environment for the production of theberries.

There was no consideration given to any possibility that lifemight have been involved in any of these two scenarios. In myview, there are several things that are still unexplained in thecurrent official Meridiani blueberry scenario.

Why are the blueberries, that are not regenerated, still there onthe surface, billions of years after their putative formation?

The desert pavement thesis does not explain this especiallysince many images show damaged and deteriorating berries orpebbles, crushed berries and berries neatly sliced by the MerBRAT indicating that the haematite component of the berries isnot as durable or pervasive as is required in that hypothesis.Perfect, complete berries are indeed the exception.

Is it possible that the current observations at Meridiani mightbe due to the relatively recent formation of stromatolitic rocktypes? Could the current berries and the observed layering bedue to fossilization of ancient life adapted to an environmentof limited water availability but with highly efficient microbesimplementing the process rather than by a purely sterile processof evaporation and production of evaporites trapping the berriesin the interstices where they formed billions of years ago?

Alternatively, is there a remote possibility that some berries arebeing produced in the near subsurface of Meridiani right nowas a consequence of an ongoing and very ancient water cyclethat provides small amounts of liquid water for utilization bythe putative microbes in that environment? Could this explainthe persistence of the apparent monolayer of berries on soilsurfaces between the craters.

Why are the well formed spherical berries characterized by astrict limit in size that is usually characteristic of livingorganisms and not of inanimate concretions? What constrainedthe sizes of the berries on Mars? Could it be a paucity ofavailable subsurface water to support larger berries over theeons that Mar’s climate was substantially the same as we seenow through our remote eyes and instruments? In other wordsif the berries were formed billions of years ago with adequatewater available they should exhibit a much greater range of

sizes. They don’t. Could this be because they are beingcontinuously produced in an environment with constant andvery limited water availability?

Since many concretions on earth are formed in wet lacustrineenvironments and are usually associated with organic matteras starters for the concretion process, could there have been abiological aspect of the formation of the Meridiani blueberrieseven within the tenets of the concretion theory?

Adversarial rationales to the above questions and others can beseen throughout the ongoing discussion on the Meridianiberries on the Marsroverblog.

The remainder of this chapter seeks to describe the Meridianiberries and show, where possible, that the mystery of theblueberries has not yet been fully solved. There is yet apossibility that when adequate research is done using purposedesigned instruments, the Meridiani berries may be found tohave been significantly associated with living organisms atsome stage of their development..

Figs 7.1 and 7.2 are presented to give some idea of the rangeof shapes and other characteristics of the typical Meridianiblueberry. Fig 7.1 shows a range of blueberries imaged by theOpportunity Microscopic Imager (MI) . Fig 7.2 is a colourizedcrop from an MI mosaic that used a template of an L257Pancam image as a colour source .

Fig 7.3 is a colour composite derived from raw L257 pancamimages of sol 257 taken in a popcorn berry area. A numberof interesting characteristics of the berries can be seen in theseimages.

- Berries on evaporite rocks are practically always seen on adark matrix, not on light areas. .

- Berries, in popcorn berry areas and in a few others, are oftenfound partially encapsulated in a pale, sometimes translucentcovering. This covering is often present as a cup like base.

One of the distinguishing features of berries seen from veryearly in the mission was the presence of relatively long stalksor stems that gave the berries an appearance of hangingprecariously off the edges of the evaporite rocks.

Fig 7.4 is a pancam colour composite from raw sol 88 pancamimages that shows the often disputed stalks attached to berries.The stalks are clearly seen emanating from, bending, stretchingabove the matrix and attached to the blue berries. Theyresemble some of earth’s fungal or algal fruiting bodies risingfrom a substrate by means of stalks.

The berry stalks have however been explained as being theremnants of wind tracks formed in the lee of prevailing windswhen the berries were on the surface of rocks or soil beforebeing indurated in evaporite material. Since the rocks areproposed as the cradles for the berries this would mean thatberries with stalks, emanating from the side of layers in theevaporite rocks, were not formed in situ in the rocks but on thesurface, a situation that is totally at odds with the theory.

The sol 214 image in fig 7.11 shows one of the characteristicattributes of berries in that they often have well delineated splitplanes where they split into 2 or 3 sections leaving the splitsegments of the sphere on the ground. I wonder if this couldbe a mechanism for dispersal of something inside them whenconditions are just right.

Fig 7.2; colourized berries and pebbles, sol 806

Fig 7.1; berries and fragments, 3D anaglyph, sol 84

Fig 7.3; Popcorn Berries on dark matrix, s257, MI pano

Fig 7.4; berries with curved stalks, s88, pancam

Figs 7.5 and 7.6 seek to highlight the appearance of the surfacesof typical berry images as seen through the MIs. Such imagesusually show the berries as having distinct muted textures.

Fig 7.5 is an image of some other berries. These were takenon sol 221 and show the intricate ornamentation of the berrysurfaces. It seems to be quite a stretch to imagine that surfaceslike these might have been exposed to the martian environmentfor a few billion years as called for by the current paradigm.

Fig 7.6 is an image showing a range of shapes of berries, someof which are suggestive of a biological nature. They do nothave the inert look of say, the moqui marbles or other earthconcretions, but have a uniformity of appearance reminiscentof life. The images were taken by the MI on sol 182

Figs 7.7 and 7.8 illustrates some other aspects of the berrystalks. The berry stalks are not usually (as seen in MIs) oneper berry but can often be seen as double or triple channelsemanating from different ends of the berry. This suggests thatthe usual wind trail explanation for them is probably notapplicable in such cases as the wind trail should be in onedirection only and be more amorphous in appearance.

Fig 7.7 is a 3D anaglyph made from MIs taken on sol 40. Thestalks can be seen to be emanating from 2 opposite ends of theberry. In addition the ornamentation on the berry can be seen.

Fig 7.8 is also a 3D anaglyph but here there is a largish smoothcobble which dominates the image. The berry can also be seento have 2 stalks emanting from opposite ends.

Fig 7.5; Berries showing distinct surface ornamentation and stalk, s221

Fig 7.6; Berries, including doublet, suggestive of budding s182

Fig 7.7; 3D of berry showing surface and “stalks”, s40

Fig 7.8; Berry with surface stalk near to large smooth clast, s62

The images shown in Figs 7.9 to 7.16 illustrate another aspectof the nature of berries.

The interior of all berries is not composed entirely of a hardhaematite mass . That may be true for some, as seen in fig 7.9,where two brushed berries have been captured in a 3D anaglyphmade from two MI s from sol 401. The anaglyph shows thatthe brushing process has removed parts of the dark hard interiorstructure of one of the berries leaving significant damage onthe presumably hard remaining structure and showing that theinterior is composed of discrete small dark and pale particles.

Fig 7.10 is an anaglyph showing the insides of a berry that hasbeen sectioned while lying in the soft evaporite rock matrix ofa typical Meridiani rock. Three conclusions are possible fromthis image. 1) the berry is not as hard as one would expect ifthe interior was totally composed of hard haematite as itsappearance, as well as the fact that the RAT did not dislodge itfrom the relatively soft evaporite matrix, suggests that itsinterior is relatively soft. 2) the interior of the berry iscomposed of numerous, seemingly discrete, very small objectsthat lie just below the resolution of the MI. 3) there is no distinctinternal concentric layering of the berry contents, unlike earthconcretions.

Figs 7.11 and 7.12 show similar fine internal structures ascompared with the berries of fig 7.10. They do not resemblemy concept of what haematite would be expected to look like.Figs 7.13 and 7.14 show berries which have lost their internalcontents leaving partial external shells. This surely is not theimage that is portrayed of the hard haematite concretion that isproposed as being practically impervious to degradation overbillions of years of martian environmental abuse.

Fig 7.9; 3D of berries, outer layer removed by brush, sol 140

Fig 7.10; 3D of Berry sectioned by RAT, sol 149

Fig 7.12; berry contents exposed by brush, sol 1103

Fig 7.11; brushed berry with split plane sol 214

Fig 7.13; highly degraded berry with hollow interior, sol 210

Fig 7.14; Another berry with hollow interior, sol 715

The Marsroverblog posters collaborated in a project that wascoordinated by a former regular poster, Henry, to measure therange of sizes of berries to determine if they fitted a statisticaldistribution that is typical of living organisms or fossils or ofinanimate objects. Several members measured the diametersof berries from the MI images and these were then fitted intoa statistical distribution by Henry, Marsman and Denis Royer.The study concluded that the berries indeed fitted a statisticaldistribution, a left tailed size limited weibull distributionprofile, that is characteristic of living things and fossils.

Fig 7.17 gives some idea of the range of sizes of typicalMeridiani berries over the progress of Opportunity from Eaglecrater, where it landed, to Erebus crater. In general the berrysizes diminished as Opportunity moved further and lower downthe Meridiani gradient. However, some large berries were alsoseen at some of the other craters that Opportunity visited afterErebus. Blueberry diameters range between 1 and 6.6 mms.A number of similarly sized and coloured but irregularly shapedclasts or pebbles are normally intermixed with the berries.

I would speculate that perhaps 10 percent only of the berriescaptured on Opportunity’s PanCam images might have anyrelationship with life. The others are likely to be concretions,clasts or some other product of haematite generation,breakdown and spread on the plains of Meridiani.

Fig 7.18 shows a rock that was imaged on sol 1150. The picturewas taken in the dark streak area of Victoria crater’s annulus.There was significant rover activity near this rock since aMoessbauer x-ray spectrometer reading was taken very closeto it. The rock itself shows the signs of a recent dislodgementin that the side nearest to the camera must have been previously

anchored in the soil. A number of observations and inferencesmay be valid from an examination of this picture.

1) The soil was unaffected by or appears to have healed itselffrom any recent disturbances as there is no clear imprint of therock, or where it came from, on the soil. There are also norover tracks seen in the related NavCam images

2) The near undersurface environment supported a largernumber of berries than are evident on the surface itself asgauged by the relatively large number of berries that can beseen sticking to the now exposed side of the rock that waspreviously embedded in the soil.

3) the rock was, characteristically very shallowly emplaced inthe soil.

Figs 7.19 and 7.20 extends the observations above. Fig 7.19shows the dark streak areas on a map of Victoria. Fig 7.20compares the berries on the surface on sol 1143 with those onsol 1150. There was an appearance of a number of new, clean,fully formed berries in the highlighted area some time betweensol 1143 and sol 1150.

The appearance of these berries has been ascribed to windmovements and the motion of the Rover between the timesthese images were taken..

There are a number of observations which suggest that windand rover motion might have been influential but may not ofthemselves give the full picture of what might have ensued..

1) The Moessbauer imprint can be seen in the area highlightedfor sol 1143. That imprint has dissipated even further (to thepoint of being very difficult to discern) in the sol 1150 image.

2) Martian winds have not been observed to be capable ofmoving berries any significant distances, except downslope and3D’s do not show an appreciable downslope in this area.

3) Opportunity tracks are not evident in the immediate vicinityof this area in the original images so the rover itself did notphysically add soil containing berries to the area in question

4) A few of the berries that seem to appear in the sol 1150image can be seen peeping out of the soil in the sol 1145 MIof the area as compared with the sol 1148 MI image.

It therefore seems that some of the new, clean berries thatappeared between sols 1145 and 1148 (as based on MI imagesshown in Figs 7.21 and 7.22 ) originated from below thesurface. This could have happened if soil was somehowmoved from around the berries or had settled. Such a massivemovement of soil would have likely displaced the originalberries and there is no evidence of this. Could settling of soildue to water seeping into it have been the cause?

Another possibility, however remote, might be the emergenceof previously buried berries. Berries emerging from the soilby some unknown mechanism would be consistent with myconjecture that some agency in the soil (physical or otherwise)is capable of quickly mobilizing the emergence of berries indisturbed materials as seen at purgatory (to be discussed later);This is seen in the Opportunity airbag marks on sol 52; and inthe Opportunity cross tracks that have consistently shown therepopulation of areas created by MerB tracks that were initiallyapparently denuded of observable berries.

Fig 7.17; range of berry sizes from eagle to erebus

Fig 7.18; 3D of side of rock former subsurface berrries on overturnedrock, s1150

Fig 7.19 map of victoria showing dark streak areas

Fig 7.20; Berries appear between sols 1143 (L) and 1150 (R )

Fig 7.21; MI of area with original surface berries, sol 1145

Fig 7.22; MI of area with old and newly appearing berries, sol 1148

Emergence or exposure of some purgatory berries;

During Opportunity’s trek to Victoria it got stuck in a ripplenamed Purgatory, and remained there for several days beforeit was freed. During that time, in trying to extricate itself, itmade a number of relatively deep trenches in the ripplematerial. A number of Pancam and Navcam Images were takenof the sides of the trenches at different times during the debacle.

Some of the Pancam images showed pebbles or berries beingexposed as time went by or, alternatively, emerging from thenewly exposed sides of the trenches.

Fig 7.23 is a montage of pancam images of the track wall thatshow that over relatively short timescales, berries or pebblesthat would have normally been covered, seem to be quicklyextending into the new environment. It also shows that thetrack surfaces also quickly becomes repopulated with largenumbers of smaller berries after only a few weeks exposure onthe surface.

The Fig 7.24 image shows the exposed track, and apparentlyemerging from it, right down the track wall, a large number ofberries or pebbles on stalks. These stalks seem unlikely tohave been the result of current wind trail activity but they mightbe from past wind activity when the berries/clasts werescattered in the top soil and later covered by several layers ofberry filled dust which had not yet become indurated. But ifthat is so why don’t we now see evidence of current wind tailstalk-forming activity at the current plains surfaces?

The “emergence” of berries from deep down the track sidesalso suggests that berries are not necessarily only a monolayeron the plains soil surfaces as seems to be the accepted norm.

Fig7.24; berries emerging from MerB purgatory track wall, sol 496

Fig 7.23; numerous berries emerged or exposed in just 32 days

Other peculiarities of the Evaporite pavement rocks;

From the time that Opportunity landed in Eagle crater one ofthe dominant features on the landscape was the evaporite rockswhich bore numerous berries on their surfaces as well asemerging from the layers seen on their exposed sides.

On the plains between, and usually near to, the craters thepavement rocks were often seen, surrounded by a veritable“sea” of encroaching berries but almost always populated byjust a few berries on their top surfaces. Such a distributionseems to be consistent with such evaporite rocks being formedfrom below in an environment already filled with berries.

Figs 7.25, 7.26 and 7.27 show the typical surfaces of evaporiterocks taken from sols 632, 559 and 1131 respectively. Thesurfaces are often convex and usually exhibit radial, circular orother regularly shaped cracks. The pictures also show themicrochannels.

The figures also show what is another typical attribute of theinter crater pavement rocks. Those that have been upturnedseem to be generally not deeply placed but to be quite shallowand are often very susceptible to breakage by the rover’s weightwhich normally results in the rock’s edges being shifted andshowing a dark disconnect from the near undersurface.

Fig 7.28 is an image of living stromatolites from the Shark Bayworld heritage site in Australia. The image is included only toshow that the Meridiani pavement rocks appear to share a fewof the physical / morphological characteristics of the Earthstromatolites.

Fig 7.25; 3D of pavement polygons and convex surfaces; Sol 632

Fig 7.26; pavement rock, rind, berries eroding out of rock, sol 559

Fig 7.27; shallow dislodged pavement rocks sol 1131, 3D

Fig 7.28; Living Stromatolites, Australia. Ex. Everything Everywhere

The Cape York Unconformity

In July 2011 Opportunity approached Endurance crater after along trek from Victoria crater . The first target was Cape York,a small raised area on the Crater’s edge, which was known tohave some surfaces that were rich in phyllosilicates.

It was soon recognized that the Cape York surface was the firstthat Opportunity had encountered that was not dominated bythe ubiquitous spherical blueberries. The typical evaporiterocks were also absent. Taking the place of the berries werelarge numbers of similarly sized but irregularly shaped claststhat mimicked the colour of the blueberries. No papers haveyet been seen that details the geochemistry of these clasts.

The major find by Opportunity at Cape York has been thenumerous gypsum veins on a number of surfaces. The

existence of gypsum veins strongly suggests that water flowedthrough Cape York surfaces sometime in the past and there isalso a possibility that microbes might have been involved inthe formation of the Gypsum.

The following two images compare the features of the surfacesoil in the transition zone between Meridiani proper and CapeYork (fig. 7.29) with soil in a typical Cape York area (fig 7.30).Fig 7.29 shows some typical spherical berries and fig 7.30shows practically no typical berries. Hardly any typicalevaporite rocks are also seen at CY.

Why is this? Are the sulphate rich evaporites essential to theformation of typical spherical berries? Are the irregular clastsproduced by a different process? Were the spherical berrieseasily erodable?

Fig 7.29; Soil in transition area near CY, sol 2986

Fig 7.30; Typical Clasts. Cape York, sol 2791

Conclusions on Berries

The Meridiani berries are considered by most scientists to bemere concretions without any semblance of life being involvedin their formation.

However, the pictures of berries shown in this chapter suggeststhat some berries may be a bit more than just mere concretions.Most Meridiani berries that have been fortuitously sliced orsomehow have their internal structure exposed, show that suchstructures are not comparable with the internal arrangementsof typical earth concretions.

The images presented in this chapter have demonstrated thatmany berries; 1) display external ornamentation that isgenerally absent from earth’s concretions; 2) have contentsthat appear dissimilar to the earth’s berry analogues; 3) are notnecessarily composed entirely of Hematite; 4) give theappearance of fairly rapid emergence from disturbed surfacesand; 5) follow a statistical size limited distribution that arecharacteristic of living organisms, fossils or their products.

The jury should therefore still be out re. definitively stating thatthe berries are rocks. They might indeed be concretions but,imo, life was probably involved in the formation and theimpressive spread of the berries on the Meridiani surfaces.Indeed, the work of Aubrey et al on the San Diego Ironstoneconcretions may have found the closest earth analogue to theblueberries. His concretions used life as a starting agent.Perhaps the Meridiani berries also used life in a similar mannerand not just 3 billion years ago only. Perhaps berries will befound on Mars wherever similar conditions of evaporite rocks,low pH’s and equatorial ambient temperatures coexist.

CHAPTER 5; Significance of the rover tracksSeveral exposures of the near subsurface of Mars by the roverwheels while making tracks on the surface or overturning rocksor even by other disturbances to the soil, painted a picture ofa subsurface environment which is quite different to theMartian surface that is directly exposed to daily sunlight.

The current paradigm would imply that this should not be so.Since, with no liquid water on the planet for the past 3 billionyears or so, the subsurface should be expected to present asfeatureless, bone-dry, and sterile areas that should bepractically indistinguishable from the surface itself.

But the images of the areas exposed by the rovers show insteada subsurface that appears to be a quite dynamic one in whichthere is a hint of active chemistry or biochemistry going onwhenever there is a breach of the surface. The few picturesthat show the same area at different times also appear to indicatethat many changes may be occurring there and quite quickly.

Practically all the rover tracks, when rendered in colour, presentan appearance that seems to be more consistent with currentactive processes that suggest true soil formation in a dampmicroclimate than with being sterile areas in a featureless drysub surface untouched by the activities of living organisms.

The subsurface does not present as fine lifeless regolith. Insteadit has practically all the visual characteristics of an earth soiland a loamy one at that.

The following images have been selected to show a range ofwhat the rover tracks have revealed of the nature of the martiansubsurface.

Fig 8.1 shows an area of crossed Opportunity wheel tracks thatwere made as Opportunity entered and exited Endurance crater.The earlier tracks were made about 225 days before beingreimaged on sol 319. This image shows a fairly rapidrepopulation of the track with berries over that time.

The repopulation seems to be most evident and heaviest on thesides of the tracks which would have undergone the mostdisturbance by the rover wheels, i.e. Some of these berriesmight have been brought to the surface at the time Opportunitymade the original tracks. The other berries that were pushedout of view have, by and large, not reappeared but there areseveral, apparently new, small berries in the disturbed trackareas. Were they somehow pushed up from below by someunknown mechanism which might be related to a desertpavement type maintenance of armoured clasts on earth’s sandydesert surfaces?

Fig 8.2 shows another crossed track at Victoria crater. The oldtrack was made on sol 952 and the new one on sol 1289. Thereappears to be significant repopulation of the old track. Berriesare much smaller than the sol 319 berries and again the highrepopulation is most evident on the sides of the track whichwould have been most disturbed by the rover wheels.

The mechanism that causes the repopulation is uncertain. Adetailed look at the berry distribution in the sol 319 crossedtracks, using imageJ to estimate the numbers of berries and theareas involved, demonstrated that there were higher densitiesof berries on the edges of the old track as compared with nearbyunaffected surfaces and inner portions of the old track. It alsosuggested that berry sizes were generally smaller on the tracks

than on the unaffected surfaces. A figure summarizing thatstudy is shown in my Smugmug photosite.

Fig 8.3 is an anaglyph of the sol 319 crossed tracks in the lugarea. It shows a very friable looking area of soil that wasexposed by the wheel lugs and also show a number ofinteresting organic looking shapes. This image should beexamined closely using Stereophotomaker. It looks almostidentical to a very fertile earth soil, minus the berries.

The appearance of the soil in the central areas of the old trackalso suggest a settling and smoothening of the track surfaces.It is unlikely that berries from the nearby unaffected surfacewere transported there by wind.

Fig 8.4 is another Opportunity track made in the dark streakarea of Victoria crater’s annulus. The image was taken on sol1138. The track is a new one and shows quite clearly that thedark streak soil is apparently different to the other plains soilsthat Opportunity tracked across as it appears to be less amenableto producing clods and settles very quickly into a smoothlooking surface. Could there have been moisture or some otherunknown agency involved in this?

Figs 8.5 and 8.6 show two tracks made by Spirit at ColumbiaHills, Gusev. They illustrate some of the general features thatare characteristic of the deep tracks caused there by Spirit’sdamaged stuck wheel.

1) The stuck wheel turned up salts that appear to have beenshallowly placed in the subsurface.

2) They sometimes show a monolayer of what might be a bluesalt that covers contiguous areas in what appears to have been

a fluid movement. The blue, apparently very thin layer,suggests to me that the rover wheels might have suddenlyexposed a small subsurface brine resevoir containing a bluesalt to the dessicating atmosphere. The water would havequickly evaporated leaving the thin monolayer deposit of salt.This might also explain a similar situation often seen in severalOpportunity track images as well.

3) There are usually a number of different colours of exposedsalts in the Gusev examples suggesting that there are a varietyof salt species present in the subsurface.

4) In one example of salts unearthed by Spirit at least one ofthem sits on the crest of a ripple. This salt is very difficult toexplain as having been formed a few billion years ago. Severaldiscrete globular salt nodules can be seen(see fig 8.6).

The Fig 8.6 image also shows some interesting shapes that liejust underneath the soil surface. These shapes are eitherfilamentous or of variable lengths of joined spheres. Thoseshapes are best seen when the image is magnified.

An example of salt nodules that formed overnight in the backyard of MRB contributor, R_Page, is provided for comparisononly (fig 8.7). Could the salt seen in some of the martianimages have been very recently formed in situ just under thesurface at the crest of slopes at Gusev? And if this is so, couldit be another example of a continuing water cycle at work thatis not limited by typical water tables?

5) Fig 8.8 shows what might be another interesting subsurfacephenomenon. Here, in the foreground, a dark coloured,seemingly viscous, layer of “muck” can be seen apparentlyemerging from under a displaced rock that has several holes.

The muck does not appear to be a pure salt, nor does it seemto be typical surficial soil. It seems to have exuded or flowedenmasse from under the displaced rock as inferred from therelatively straight sides of the flow and its appearance of havingflowed over the salt laden soil next to and underneath it. Themuck also has the appearance of being a fluid mixture of anumber of components with one part being a blue stained mixand the other being dark brown.

Fig 8.2; Crossed MerB tracks Sols 952 & 1289, Victoria

Fig 8.1; MerB crossed tracks, lug area, sol 319, 3D anaglyph

Fig 8.3; MerB crossed tracks, lug area, sol 319, 3D anaglyph

Fig 8.4; MerB new Track, sol 1138, Victoria 3D anaglyph

Fig 8.5 Spirit track with salt unearthed, sol 1300

Fig 8.6; Spirit salt exposed with nodules on ripple crest, sol 797

Fig 8.8; Soil exuding from track made by spirit rover., sol 721

Fig 8.7; R_page’s rapidly formed “salt berries”

Fig 8.9 shows another characteristic feature of some of MerB’stracks where the wheels were used to heap and crush the soilin order to study the soil profile. In this particular image, takenon sol 929, Opportunity had scuffed and heaped up the soil asit had done several times previously but here there was a cleareffect that had only been muted in previous earlier images ofOpportunity tracks.

The graded and compacted soil surfaces that were left by thewheels showed a clear deposit of what might have been crushedberries on the surface. In earlier images of similar operations,berries appeared to have been pushed into the subsurfaceleaving no trace. Here they seemed to have been crushed andleft on the surface. If they were crushed it would suggest thatthe berries here were not strongly armoured with a haematitecovering or had been badly degraded prior to Opportunity’swheel trenching.

Alternatively, what might have happened was exposure of ablue brine which evaporated quickly leaving a blue stain. Thiswould be another example of Opportunity’s wheels producingsuch an effect.

Fig 8.10 compares two Opportunity wheel tracks taken mereseconds apart on sol 2953. The image processing was done byHortonheardawho. The interesting aspect of this image is thedisappearance of the white irregular spots that could clearlybe seen in the first, leftmost, image and is indicated by an arrow.It is conjectured that the spots were patches of ice exposed byOpportunity’s wheels which sublimated quickly between thetwo exposures. No salts or other white substance would beexpected to give such a reaction.

Fig 8.10; comparison of rover track taken at 2 different times on s2953

Fig 8.9 MerB track showing berries crushed by wheel, sol 929

CHAPTER 6: Other visual indicators of lifeThere were several images sent back by the rovers that showedobjects, textures, colours, situations, etc., that suggested that asecond look should have been taken of them. Most of thesepossible anomalies were bypassed in the search for ancientwater or in the interest of reaching the next major goal quickly.

I collected some of these images, most of them being MIs andthey are presented here in an effort to illustrate my contentionthat some of them might be signs of life on Mars.

A miscellany of stains

According to the current paradigm the last liquid water seen onMars was at least 3 billion years ago. According to thatparadigm there are no microbes on Mars at the present time.

However, several of the images show what appear to be clearsigns of stains on soil surfaces, around rocks, on rocks and evenon the rover instrument deck itself. Such stains suggests thata solution, an emulsion or some other homogenous liquidmixture of a chemical or biochemical came into contact with asurface on which it became absorbed or adsorbed and leftdiscolourations on the affected surface.

A material that is known to produce stains on rocks on Earthis haematite. Mann, a regular poster on MRB on matters relatedto life on Mars made the following statement on stains on Mars;“Hematite is rust. The darker blue greys we see in bands, underthe edges of rocks, on rocks, coming from the sides of craters,all this is Martian rust and a sign of interaction with moisture,Martian style”. I think he might be essentially right.

The following are some pictures that show signs of stains onvarious soil or rock surfaces on Mars. At both Gusev andMeridiani there are numerous examples of staining aroundrocks and indeed staining of rocks themselves.

Fig 9.1 and 9.2 show clear examples of various differentcoloured stains around crater rocks at Gusev and Meridiani.In fig 9.1 there are the usual blue stains but there are also brown,green and yellow stains as well, possibly indicating that thereare different types of chemicals or biochemicals that make upthe stain. Fig 9.2 shows that the blue stains are present atMeridiani just as they are at Gusev.

Fig 9.3 and 9.4 show the blue or dark streaks that might be signsof recent flows of liquid brines down the sides of craters. Fig9.3 shows Endurance crater and Fig 9.4 Gusev. Could it bethat these stains might be signs of metabolic reactions ofputative microbes populating these damp streaks?

Fig 9.5 shows what appears to be a drip stain on a rock imagedat Gusev. It shows the usual blue drip around a portion of therock and also what appears to be a darker blue drip emanatingfrom a horizontal crack in the rock.

Fig 9.6 shows what appears to be an analagous situation on aMeridiani rock. The blue drip stain is on the left of theforeground rock.

I expect that these stains would be explained as being merelydust. But, might it not be possible with a diurnal water cycleacting over millenia, that stains are being produced by watermediated chemistry and that they manifest themselves exactlywhere one would expect to see them on the soil, in drip patternson rocks, etc.,?

Fig 9.1; rocks in a Gusev crater showing coloured stains, s490

Fig 9.2; Crater edge rocks at Meridiani showing blue stains, s479

Fig 9.4; Stains on crater rocks at Gusev, sol 1308

Fig 9.3 More slope streaks in Endurance crater, sol 97

Fig 9.5 Blue stain exuding from a rock at Gusev, s648

Fig 9.6; Blue stain exuding from rock at Meridiani, s1178

Figs 9.7 to 9.10 show other stains, some of which have beenthe subject of much discussion on MRB.

Fig 9.7 is a Hortonheardawho image of the stain on MerB’sinstrument deck. The NASA explanation for that stain is thatit is merely a manifestation of dust accumulation on theaffected area alternating with intermittent cleaning events. Thepro-life posters contend that it is indeed a stain which remainsin evidence after wind events and grows between those events.Lots of energy and arguments have gone into “the stain” onMRB and interested readers might wish to check out thedetailed arguments there re. the pros and cons of it being a stain.

Fig 9.8 shows a scene from a sol 80 pancam image of rocksdisrupted by Spirit’s wheels which left a trail of what looks likea gooey greenish material from underground on most of therocks touched by the wheels. The trail left by the substance isindicated by the imposed arrows. It seems unlikely that thesubstance could be dry dust. It therefore appears that Spirittouched a sticky substance which it later transferred to anumber of rocks.

Fig 9.9 is another image of the MerB stain . Here it can be seenthat the colour of the stain matches with a blue colourationaround some nearby rocks. Full pancam reflectance spectraindicated that the two spectra matched for all pancam filters.

Fig 9.10 shows another fortuitous removal of a rock thatrevealed an interesting subsurface. In this case Spirit exposeda level blue area that contrasted with the colouration of thesurface. Could this be a view of a general situation where afluid might be found just below the surface?

Fig 9.7; Stain on MerB’s instrument deck ex. Horton

Fig 9.8; Stains from subsurface left on rocks by MerA , s80

Fig 9.10; rock broken by spirit showing level blue area below, sol 560

Fig 9.9; stain on MerB instrument panel and disturbed rock, sol 2161

Wefts, coverings, sporulations, textures etc

The surfaces of several rocks imaged by the MI appear to showstriations or slightly raised filamentous areas that arereminiscent of rhizomorphs. These ropy areas are explainedas being striations made by wind movement as the winds erodedsoft areas of the surfaces of these rocks over eons.

Figs 9.11 to 9.13 shows some examples of such raised areas.Fig 9.11 is an area on the surface of a meteorite at Meridiani.Of interest here is the weft like strands seen on the rock surfaceand the dirt like appearance of the nearby hollow in the rock.

Fig 9.12 is another example of raised filamentous areas on thesurface of a Meridiani rock. These areas interlock and meanderdown the surface and give the impression of being organic.Fig 9.13 is another example of raised filaments on the surfaceof a rock. The filaments are seen only on one side of the rock.

During the 2012 winter stopover at Cape York, Opportunityimaged several examples of apparent filaments on rocks there.Some of these can be seen on Hortonheardawho’s flickr site aswell as on mine.

Fig 9.14 is an example of another type of filamentous structureinside eroded rock surfaces in a Spirit MI. Here, the edges ofthe internal rock surfaces appear to be populated by chains ofsmall spheres (about 100 um in diameter) that seem to bepresent on most edges seen. My speculation here is thatperhaps we might be seeing the effects and signs of theactivities of some putative endolithic or lithotrophic organisms.

Fig 9.11; Strange strands on a rock , MerB sol 641

Fig 9.12: Strands on another rock , MerB sol 1198

Fig 9.13; Strands on a meteorite rock, MerB sol551

Fig 9.14; Vesiculated rock showing strands and chains, MerA sol 663

Other small objects that make one go; Hmmm!

Many of the MI images of eroded surfaces of rocks at bothMeridiani and Gusev sites show objects that seem to beanomalous for a dry sterile Mars. The following figures aresome examples of MIs that show such apparent anomalies.

Fig 9.15 is one such example taken from an MI of anOpportunity rock surface of sol 649. It shows what appears tobe a small berry and a 2X magnification of it with thesomewhat indistinct particles that appear to be forming thesmall berry. The image is presented as a 3D anaglyph. SeveralMI images show similar structures, particularly around theperiod of the Erebus campaign.

Fig 9.16 is a 3D anaglyph made by Hortonheardawho of an MIof a hole in a Gusev rock. Here, several white particles can beseen as well as some dark ones. Are these particles merelySODs or could they be something else?

Fig 9.15; Rock surface showing small berry, MerB sol 649

Fig 9.16; sol 551 MI -black and white particles; ex horton

Fig 9.17 is an MI of Martian soil deliberately unearthed byOpportunity on sol 25. That series of images showed a verysparse population of berries in the subsurface but also showedthat these subsurface berries were bright and apparently clean.However, the most noteworthy aspect of one of these imageswas what appeared to be strings in the soil that appeared to bemade up of discrete particles joined together. If the image isreal it would suggest that some agency in the soil is acting tobind some particles together. Life would be one of thecandidates for such an agent.

Fig 9.18 is an image of the central crater ripples of one of thecraters in Meridiani that Opportunity visited. Such ripples arepresent in every medium sized or large crater that the roversvisited. The rovers never took the chance of being entrappedin any of the ripples and only carried out remote spectrometerreadings to characterize them. Some bloggers considered thattheir brilliant colours and sleek polished appearance suggestedthat ice was somehow involved in their formation, however thiswas never corroborated. There was, however, a recent paperthat suggested that several crater ripples showed a central areawhich was populated by volcanic glass and that such areasmight be prime candidates as habitats of microbial life. Fig 9.18shows particles that mimic the appearance of the glasses shownin that paper. If they are indeed volcanic glass it may be anothersign that life might be existing on the martian surface.

Fig 9.19 is an anaglyph of an MI taken from Gusev images.The well ordered small particles on the edges of the protrudingrock might be discrete soil particles that aggregated in chainsand somehow stuck on the rock surface. However, there is alsoa possibility that they might be resting propagules of someunknown organism.

Fig. 9.20 is an example of a similar situation, but with rocks atthe Cape York Opportunity winter haven. On approaching thisarea Opportunity showed several small rocks all of whosesurfaces, away from the crater, had a tan material stuck on them.Fig 9.20 is an MI anaglyph of one of these spots. Like Fig 9.19,the spots appear to be made up of chains of discrete particulatesof roughly 100 um diameter each. The sizes of the particles inthe fig. 9.19 image and this one appear to be comparable.

Fig 9.21 is an image of spots captured on one of MerB’smagnets on sol 1223. These spots do not resemble the typicalmagnetic dust that is routinely captured on the magnets. Insteadthey look like dark, perhaps viscous, liquid spots. In additionthe location where they were captured was in the vicinity of theVictoria dark streak area, where it might be within the realmof possibility that they could be related to wind mediatedmovement of particles that might themselves have beenassociated with moisture.

Fig 9.22 is an image of a rock at Gusev, taken on sol 1252,that shows a definite thick rind that has fallen off from a portionof the rock The rind surface shows features reminiscent of analgal or fungal covering on earth.

Fig 9.18; Volcanic glass and ripples inside a crater, sol 688

Fig 9.17; Strings of soil in soil profile at Meridiani; sol 25

Fig 9.20; Tan coverings at CY, MerB, s2805

Fig 9.19; gusev rock with small objects attached MerA

Fig 9.21; Greasy looking spots on MerB magnet sol 1223

Fig 9.22; Rind on Spirit rock; MerA s1252

Rock Varnish?

The origins of Rock Varnish on Earth and its possiblerelationship to similar varnish like coverings on Mars, as seenin several images of rocks on Mars, is a hotly researched topicfollowing its broaching by Barry DiGregorio in his book “Mars,the living planet” in 1997. Rock varnish is defined as a micronscale coating of manganese, iron oxides and clays on rocksurfaces in deserts and elsewhere. The manganese componentof the varnish is the main subject of interest andferromanganese metabolizing bacteria are the microbial agentsimplicated in the formation of varnish over long periods of time.

Several papers have posited that manganese metabolizingmicrobes are essential to the process while others haveproposed that microbes are an inessential element since someresearch has shown that rock varnish can be formed in theLaboratory without microbial input.

The jury is therefore still out re. the absolute necessity formicrobial intervention in the development of rock varnish onEarth. What seems to be clear, however, is that practically allnatural occurrences of rock varnish on earth has a microbialcomponent.

Fig 9.23 is but one example of several, from both Gusev andMeridiani, that shows the colouration and texture of typicalrock varnish. An Earth rock partially covered in rock varnishis shown, for comparison, in Fig 9.24.

If the ubiquitous dark coloured rocks seen by both MERs onMars are associated with putative martian rock varnish it wouldmean that widespread occurrence of microbes on and near thesurface of Mars is a given.

Fig 9.24;Rock Varnish - Earth

Fig 9.23 Rock Varnish,on Mars? MerB sol 2157

Spirit SODs, etc;

The appearance of the dust produced by the RATting orbrushing process that was captured on several MI images ofrocks examined by both rovers, was somewhat peculiar. Thedust appeared to aggregate in distinct repeatable geometricpatterns but there seemed to be distinct differences betweensuch dust patterns from Opportunity targets (primarily thesulphate enriched evaporite pavement rocks) as compared withdust patterns from Spirit targets, usually basaltic rocks. Thesedust patterns were christened Self Organizing Dust or SODsby MRB posters.

In addition to the SODs there were a number of dark particlesin the 100 um range that were seen in some of the Spirit images.Figs 9.25 and 9.26 are examples of some of these. These donot appear to be characteristic of the SODs born of RATdroppings . These images show distinct repeating shapes.

Fig 9.26 is a 2X magnification of one of the fig 9.25 objects.The shapes of the objects can be seen more clearly there.

Fig 9.27 is an MI of pebbles on an undisturbed surface at Gusevtaken on sol 52. The pebbles appear to be partially covered bydiscrete, pale, amoeboid shaped objects that appear to besticking to the rock surfaces. Several other Spirit pebbles fromother areas and sols appear to be populated by similar objects.It is possible that these are merely SODs but the resolution ofthe Spirit MI makes it impossible to be sure.

Fig 9.28 shows a portion of MerA’s deck that was covered ina dust containing some raised filamentous objects on sol 640.

Fig 9.25; Comparison of dark spirit shapes on different images

Fig 9.26; Spirit shapes , MerA s529

Fig 9.27 Pebbles with pale objects, Gusev, MerA MI , sol 52

Fig 9.28; MerA deck covered in black dust, sol 640

Evaporite rocks and Stromatolites

I’ve had a niggling thought, since MerB touched down onMeridiani planum, that the evaporite rocks and the berries theycontain, as well as the veritable sea of berries around themmight be manifestations of some sort of association with life.

I’ve wondered if the calcareous fossil stromatolites seen aroundseveral shallow coastlines on Earth might be models for theformation of the Meridiani berries but only in the sense that onMars, miniscule amounts of water, on a relatively constantdiurnal basis, might be involved in the maintenance of arelatively water rich environment near the subsurface and theongoing formation from that environment of the evaporiterock and berries over eons of time up to the present.

Such a scenario might explain some of the enigmatic aspectsof evaporite rocks such as; the shallow placement of all suchrocks that have been dislodged by Opportunity’s wheels; theapparent persistent monolayer of berries on the plains surfacesdespite the evident relative fragility of the berries; and also thesuggestion that berries and matrix materials apparently quicklyemerge from damaged surfaces to repopulate and heal suchsurfaces. Several of these possibilities are very easy forOpportunity to test even at this stage of its Mission.

Fig 9.29 is just one example of an image of an Opportunitypavement rock, in 3D, from sol 614, that bears some superficialresemblance to living stromatolites. Fig 9.30 is an image of atransverse section of a stromatolite that resembles similarimages of the Meridiani evaporite rocks with even concretionlike spheroids being evident.in the mix.

Fig 9.29; evaporite rock with exposed berries, MerB s614

Fig 9.30; Stromatolite, showing cross section of layers with concretions

The Concepcion and other rinds

When Opportunity visited Concepcion crater, also called thefresh crater, one of the things which stood out was the presenceof light blue coloured rinds (in L257 images) on the surfacesof several rocks. These rinds had apparently not been observedbefore by the rover. NASA later ascribed them to impact meltsurfaces on rocks. However, there were a few geologist posterson MRB who questioned this characterization.

Fig 9.31 is a typical PanCam image of a Concepcion rind. Therelatively thin flaky crust was generally seen to supportflattened or otherwise distorted sub spherical bodies which wereconjectured to have been berries. There were no comprehensiveMI’s done of the area to get an idea of the range of visualcharacteristics of the rind structures. Fig 9.33 gives some ideaof how the surfaces appear in 3D.

One of my speculations was that the rinds or impact melts werereminiscent of some algal bodies and fruiting structures and Iwondered if there was any possibility that they could be fossilsof pre-impact organisms that might have lived in the fill in thevertical cracks between the evaporite rocks

Figs 9.32 and 9.34 are images of an Earth lichen and of astromatolite viewed from the top of the layers. They areprovided for rough visual comparison with the putative meltstructures that are in the same orientation.

Fig 9.35 shows what appears to be a rind and Fig 9.36 showsa nearby similar rind imaged by Opportunity on sol 88 on therim of Fram crater. These rinds have characteristics that aresuggestive of life. The discrete objects of which they arecomposed all have similar shapes; the same colouring; surfaces

that exhibit a consistent, smooth texture; and many of themhave short protuberances. The Fig 9.36 objects are essentiallythe same in all respects as those in Fig 9.35.

These repeating characteristics are consistent with being biomarkers. In addition, in Fig 9.35, the pale smooth milkylooking area on the top right of the objects and the blue fluidlike areas below heighten the impression that the objects mightnot be typical evaporite rock fragments.

The images were taken on sol 88 on the rim of Fram crater nearEndurance crater. The context image in fig 9.36a is suggestiveof Fram being a fresh crater and it might therefore be possiblethat the rinds could represent life forms blasted out of the craterin the not too distant past. No MI’s nor Right eye filters weretaken done by Opportunity for this series of images. Hence noclose-ups or 3D views are possible. The images were takentowards the end of Opportunity’s first winter season on Mars.The maximum temperature at that time was around 10 deg. Cand the minimum -70 deg. C.

The context image in Fig 9.36a indicates where the two “rinds”were found. Fig 9.36b is a ratio colour image byHortonheardawho that shows a number of anomalous features.

The most likely explanation that might be given for theseobjects is that they are merely atypical evaporite rock fragmentsthat have fortuitously been juxtaposed in a manner that issuggestive of life. But, could it be that on sol 88 Opportunityimaged two separate examples of groups of a multicellularmartian life form that had been blasted by a small impact froma fairly shallow depth in the ground near Endurance crater?Large Martian Tardigrade types come to mind.

There is also another type of rock that was quite common atConcepcion but uncommon in Opportunity’s previous visitsto craters. These rocks had blackened, rough textured surfacesand pale interiors. Such characteristics are typical of lichencovered rocks on Earth.

Fig 9.37 shows a rock with blackened rough surfaces that wasapparently split into two sections lying close together. Theinterior of the rock is evidently quite different in texture andcolour to its exterior. One of the typical Concepcion rinds canalso be seen on the rock, indicating that the rind was probablyformed there after the rock developed its rough black surface

Fig 9.38 shows another rock with a small circular portion of itssurface blackened and rough. The blackened surface hereappears a bit different in texture to the surface of the rock infig 9.37 in that it appears to be predominantly made up of short,black, spiny filaments. Small portions of the typical blueConcepcion rinds can also be seen on the rock.

It seems somewhat amazing that Opportunity did not examinethe surfaces of these rocks a bit more thoroughly. Not even anMI was done. Might it be possible that the black rough surfaceswere produced through the charring of the rock surfaces by theheat of the impact? If so, could those surfaces have had asignificant organic component at that time?

Concepcion Crater was estimated as being the youngest craterto be examined by either MER rover so far. The various rindsmight be clues to relative freshness of craters if seen on rocksnear to craters. They seemed interesting enough at Conceptioncrater to justify more time being spent there on detailedexaminations, even if only through a few MIs.

Fig 9.31; Rind on a Concepcion rock, sol 2160

Fig 9.32; A typical lichen from Waynes Word rock lichens

Fig 9.33; MI of Rind on a Concepcion rock; 3D, s2158

Fig 9.34; Algal fossils on stromatolite rock, transverse section.

Fig 9.35; Large Rinds with discrete smooth surfaces, MerB, sol 88

Fig 9.36; Small rinds resembling large ones above, sol 88

Fig 9.36a; Context of rind locations on Fram Crater rim, sol 88

Fig 9.36b; Fram rim with peculiar rocks, sol 88 - ex Horton

Fig 9.37; Concepcion Rock with rough black surface, sol 2192

Fig 9.38; Concepcion rock with round blackened surface, s2159

Anomalous looking rocks

Fig 9.39 is one of Hortonheardawho’s MI composites that wasimaged on sol 2554. It might be just a fortuitous assemblageof rocks that looks like an earth fossil when viewed from aparticular angle at a particular time of day. However, purelyfor comparison purposes Fig 9.40 is presented as well.

Fig 9.40 is an image of a well known Earth fossil, a trilobyte.

The probability of Opportunity finding a trilobyte fossil at thesurface of Meridiani is practically zero at this time. Thereforeit is likely that the assemblage of rocks is indeed what it appearsto be at second glance, purely an assemblage of rocks.

Fig 9.39; sol 2544 MI -ex Horton; MerB

Fig 9.40; Trilobyte from Virtual Fossil Museum

The Gypsum veins at Cape York

One of the outstanding achievements of the MERs was the findof the Homestake gypsum veins at Meridiani by MerB.

That find added a new confirmatory data point to previousindications that water had indeed flowed or percolated atMeridiani in the past.

It also let in the possibility that not only had liquid water beencentral to the establishment of the numerous gypsum veinsfound at Cape York, but that there was a possibility thatmicrobial action was also involved in their formation sincevarious papers indicate that a number of phototrophic microbesare associated with gypsum and depend on it for various aspectsof their metabolism and also for protection from deleteriouseffects of their environment.

Fig 9..41 shows a piece of a gypsum vein on earth that wasshown to be colonized by a range of blue green algae. Fig 9.42is another Hortonheardawho colouration of a sol 2776 MI thatshows regions of unspecific colours in the Homestake gypsumvein that was found by MerB. Could these coloured regionshave once supported (or even now supports) microbialanalogues of blue green algae on Mars?

Fig 9.41; gypsum vein on Earth, microbe populations

Fig 9.42; Coloured MI of Gypsum vein Homestake -ex Horton, s2776

The Popcorn Berry area

Between sols 200 and 260 Opportunity was operating in andnear the slopes of Endurance crater when it found severalexamples of berries that showed some important differencesfrom others it had encountered before. The main differencewas that several of these berries were imaged whileencapsulated in the material of their salt laden matrix and gavethe appearance that they were now being eroded from thatmatrix. I had at first thought that these berries could just aseasily have been captured in the act of being encapsulated.However, the MI images from sol 199 and sol 257 indicate thatit is more likely that they were being eroded.

Fig 9.43 shows a well formed uneroded berry from sol 199 withdistinct surface ornamentation and a texture suggesting that itwas relatively uneroded itself while its capsule of pavementmatrix material was. It is possible that the berry surface showsthe hard material which covers a softer internal area.

Fig 9.44 shows some other berries from sol 257 that contrastssharply with the sol 199 one. The berries here are typical ofthe partly eroded ones seen all over Meridiani. Their surfacesare definitely different in ornamentation, texture and colour tothe sol 9.39 example and there are clear signs of erosion ofthese surfaces. Both of these images are 3D anaglyphs.

These images may provide some insight into the provenanceof haematite on the blueberries. On the plains surfaces theblueberries are covered with a sprinkling of haematite but whileencapsulated in the rocks they appear to have a differentcovering that is eroded at the surface and are then sprinkledwith the ubiquitous haematite dust.

Fig 9.43 MI view of Popcorn berry area, 3D, sol 199, note berry surfaceornamentation and relative colouration

Fig 9.44; MI of some eroded popcorn berries, sol 257

Suggestive images from Phoenix

The NASA lander, Phoenix, undertook a mission near the northpole of Mars in 2007. That mission was quite succesful but noton the scale of the MER missions. The mission identified anice layer near to the surface, possible liquid water on the strutsof the lander and perclorate that might have been implicated inthe apparently inconclusive results of the 1976 Vikingexperiments that were interpreted as showing no organicchemicals at the Viking sites.

Fig 9.45 is a composite pancam image from Phoenix showingan area in the vicinity of the lander. The area is clearlyhummocky and provides ground truth for the polygons thatwere imaged at the site by the orbiters. These polygons havebeen interpreted as being evidence of underground water effectsthat create such landscapes through alternate freeze, thawcycles. That they are present suggests that even though the topsubsurface might be covered in almost permanent ice, belowthis might be areas of liquid water brines facilitated throughthe presence of perclorates and other hygroscopic salts.Morning frost was also imaged in this area.

Fig 9.46 is a crop from the OM microscopic imager that tookimages of dust particles captured on the stage of the instrument.Several images were taken that showed identifiable gemstonetype minerals but this image shows some of the dust particlesas well as a provocative object that should definitely not bethere. It is most likely that it is a chance aggregation of dustthat only mimics the form of an earth object.

Fig 9.45; Polygons resembling microchannels at the phoenix site

Fig 9.46 An image from the Phoenix OM

Conclusion on putative life signs

This chapter has attempted to show a number of possibleanomalies that were captured in various MER images andwhich suggested to me, that, taken in their totality, there mightbe a valid alternative to the currently accepted conclusion thatall life-like textures and morphologies such as chains, filaments,spheres, etc., should only reasonably be interpreted as productsof geology and not of life.

This presentation seeks to show that structures which mighthave had their origin in some sort of life process are in clearsight in some of the MER images. It is suggested that some ofthe signs seen in these images might have been produced byanalogues of earth’s endolithic microbes that might feed onrock constituents leaving clear signs of that process on theinterior or exposed surfaces of the rocks on which they feed.The rinds from Concepcion and elsewhere are a definiteanomaly and should also have been of greater scientific interestto MerB’s handlers than was actually evidenced.

In addition, the consistent repeating theme of spheres andfilaments of various sizes and levels on and in rocks and soilmight not necessarily only be geological but might also be signsof life finding the most efficient way to protect itself and alsoto be as close as possible to opportunities to disseminate itself.

It is my hope that some readers will go away from this ebookwith the feeling that perhaps there might be a valid alternativeto the current paradigm which vigorously claims that there isno life on Mars and that therefore the MER MI’s can only showsigns of a dry sterile martian surface that has been there in thatsame state, from time immemorial.

CHAPTER 7 : What will Curiosity find?The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), aka Curiosity, left Earthin November last year and is slated to be set down in GaleCrater, Mars on August 6th this year. Much has been writtenabout MSL and data on all aspects of its mission andinstrumentation is available from the links given in theReferences to this book.

The primary goal of the MSL mission is to assess the overallhabitability of the areas to be examined. To reach that goal thefollowing four objectives are listed in the MSL Press Kit:-

• Assess the biological potential of at least one targetenvironment by determining the nature and inventory of organiccarbon compounds, searching for the chemical building blocksof life and identifying features that may record the actions ofbiologically relevant processes.

• Characterize the geology of the rover’s field site at allappropriate spatial scales by investigating the chemical,isotopic and mineralogical composition of surface and near-surface materials and interpreting the processes that haveformed rocks and soils.

• Investigate planetary processes of relevance to pasthabitability (including the role of water) by assessing the longtimescale atmospheric evolution and determining the presentstate, distribution and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.

• Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation,including galactic cosmic radiation, solar proton events andsecondary neutrons.

Curiosity, even moreso than the MER rovers, is very wellequipped to study the current Martian environment at Galecrater. It will study the current environment in its landingregion as well as the records left by past environments.

Curiosity carries a weather station, an instrument formonitoring natural high-energy radiation and an instrument thatcan detect soil moisture and water-containing minerals in theground beneath the rover.

The investigations of organics and other potential ingredientsfor life will involve the analysis of samples of the soil for whatnutrients would be available now to soil microbes. It also hasthe ability to check for methane in the atmosphere.

The Science Payload consists of the following instruments:-

Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer,

Chemistry and Camera,

Chemistry and Mineralogy,

Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons,

Mars Descent Imager,

Mars Hand Lens Imager,

Mast Camera,

Radiation Assessment Detector,

Rover Environmental Monitoring Station, and

Sample Analysis at Mars

All of the payload is relevant to the search for life (orhabitability) on Mars. However, of particular relevance to thethrust of this ebook are the following instrument suites:-

The MastCam’s two cameras have very impressive specs. Theirresolution is better than the MER cameras and they can produce3Ds, videos and still pictures as well as true colour and whitebalanced images.

The ChemCam incorporates a rock-zapping laser and atelescope . It also includes spectrometers and electronics insidethe rover. The telescope can identify the chemical elementsin a target using the laser.

The Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, resembles theMicroscopic Imager of the MERS. However, it hassignificantly greater capabilities than the MERS, including; fullcolor, lights and adjustable focus. It also has white light-emitting diodes for imaging at night or in deep shadow.

The Chemistry and Mineralogy experiment, or CheMin, willbe used to analyze powdered rock and soil samples deliveredby Curiosity’s robotic arm. CheMin uses X-ray diffraction, tomore reliably identify minerals than was possible with anyinstrument on previous missions.

MSL will acquire rock samples with a percussive drill and soilsamples with a scoop.

The Sample Analysis at Mars investigation, or SAM, will studychemistry relevant to life. It will check for carbon-basedcompounds that, on Earth, are molecular building blocks oflife. It will also examine the chemical state of other elementsimportant for life. it can also check the recent hypothesis that

perclorates may have masked organics in soil samples that wereheated during Viking tests.

I think that the current evidence is very strong that there is anongoing diurnal water cycle on Mars and that chances areexcellent that Curiosity will corroborate this. If water is found,given Earth’s examples of life’s association with water in theharshest of environments, I would suspect it should also findsome of life’s biochemicals and perhaps even clear signs ofmicrobes in the subsurface.

In all, Curiosity offers significant promise that it is capable ofanswering several of the niggling questions that have plaguedthe search for life and habitability on Mars so far. Indeed, if itshows that there is current water present in the subsurface aswell as that complex biochemical molecules also exist there, itwould have gone a major part of the way to providing positivecorroboration of the disputed results of the 1976 Viking LRexperiments. If in addition to this, it also finds that there islittle evidence of damaging subsurface concentrations of thesuperoxides that were invoked to cast doubt on the Viking LRresults, that would make the LR picture even clearer.

The following images show the vicinity in the Gale crater whereMSL is expected to land and conduct its analyses. Fig 10.1Shows the most recent landing ellipse within the crater and Fig10.2 is an annotated map showing the areas of majormineralogical interest near to the landing site. The areas ofclays, sulphates and a fan that might be a site of past and even(perhaps) present brine flows are indicated.

There is however, one issue with Curiosity and Life on Marsthat might be of some importance re. future missions to searchfor life there. All contemporary missions on Mars have to

undergo a detailed sterilization process designed to drasticallyreduce the probability of viable Earth microbes being broughtthere as hitch hikers on the landers, rovers or other missionequipment.

However, It appears that there were significant breaches in theobservance of the sterilization protocols for the Curiosity drillbits and the drill itself that are to be used for taking samples.In addition, the sky crane process itself which delivers the roverdirectly onto Martian soil, has been called into question as,unlike previous lander and rover missions, direct contact withthe Martian surface would not have the normal buffer of awaiting period of a few days during which exposure to Martianambient UV rays should be adequate for sterilizing anyhitch-hiking organisms on the wheels.

In any case, there may be questions raised about the origin ofany putative organism found near the Curiosity landing site andalong its path by future missions, especially if Curiosity doesnot find such organisms itself. I don’t think such concernswould be valid if Curiosity finds evidence of widespreadbiochemicals and perhaps signs of life itself, especially in thefirst several months of the Mission.

Curiosity, if all goes well and it survives the nail biting skycrane process, should have an interesting 2 years ahead onMars. I would not be surprised if signs of recent activity bymartian relatives of Trilobytes, Lichens and Tardigrades andseveral other microbes get recorded by Curiosity.

Fig 10.1; Gale crater - most recent landing ellipse

Fig 10.2; Gale crater - strata near planned landing area

CHAPTER 8: ConclusionsThis book has attempted to document some of the indicationsfrom the MER images that life exists just below the surface ofMars.

Over the past eight years or so of the MER mission at MeridianiPlanum and also at Gusev I had hoped that some unequivocalimage of life as we know it would have been captured.

That definitive “aha!” image is yet to come. However, througha sampling of the existing MER images, I have tried to presentan outline of the visual evidence that suggests to me that Marsis not the sterile and dry planet of the current paradigm but isalive, even if not kicking.

In my view, the numerous Mars simulation and other researchactivities related to life on Mars in various universities and inmany countries, strongly suggest that there is an appreciablediurnal water cycle on Mars and that liquid water is presentnear the surface in certain environments and that therefore thereis a high probability that microbial life also exists there.

This reality is reflected in the images of the surfaces of Marsthat have been disrupted by the rovers or by recent naturaloccurrences. These images show clear signs that a processwhich is likely to be life is ongoing just under the surface.

In 2007 I made a prediction about water and life on Mars onMarsroverblog. It was as follows:

“I'm going to make a prediction that, when the dust settles onMerB's odyssey at Meridiani and all the data is collated anddispassionately studied, a new paradigm will emerge on the

hydrological cycle on Mars and particularly in the Meridianiplanum area.

It will be recognized that appreciable (even) if not substantialamounts of water are being cycled on a daily basis, frommillions of years ago up to the present time, and that thisprocess has led to the current and ongoing production of the(shallow) flat evaporite rocks seen throughout Meridiani evenjust under the berry strewn plains surfaces.

It will also be recognized that ……… the berries (some of them,not all) are partially biological entities produced (in thesubsurface) and replenished on the surface through theworkings of (impacts, wind and) the hydrological cycle inassociation with a microbiota that shares some features withsome of Earth's extremophiles.

I stand by that speculation and consider that the current situationre. Life on Mars is essentially as follows:-

It is almost certain that there is a current water cycle betweenthe atmosphere and the topmost subsurface on Mars. I thinkthat Opportunity and even Spirit have found signs of currentmoisture on the surface and near subsurface of Mars. I thinkthat it is likely that the earth maxim that “where there is waterthere is also life” also holds true for Mars. Therefore thechances are good that there is current life on or near somemartian surfaces. I think that the MER mission showed manysigns of such life but that this has been largely unrecognizedprimarily because it was not its mandate to seek life and it waspolitically incorrect to even see any signs of water or life.

Curiosity and its imminent mission in Gale crater should standa better chance of accumulating more evidence that there is a

current water cycle on Mars since a large part of their mandateand payload is precisely to answer this and some of the otherquestions that bedevilled the former missions that sought life.

The Gale crater site for the MSL Curiosity campaign offers anenhanced chance that there will be clearer signs of an activewater cycle there when and if the rover becomes functional inthat crater.

If the inherent promise in the muted signs of liquid water andpast biology at Meridiani and Gusev is anything to go by, theenhanced ability that Curiosity has to dig deeper into rocks andthe subsurface and provide better information on the chemicaland putative biochemical constituents of that subsurface shouldsignificantly increase the likelihood that it will also find clearersigns of current microbial life existing below the surface thanthe MER rovers found.

Scenes of beautiful Martian landscapes abound on theblogosphere. However, scenes at the MI level are quite rarebut in my view, are no less important. In writing this ebook Itherefore attempted to partially fill this gap by assembling afairly representative collection of MI images supporting mycontention that life probably exists right now on the surface ofMars.

I also sought to demonstrate, through the MER images, thelikelihood that the Martian sub surface experiences regularexposure to current liquid water, and also to tease out asampling of the signs that suggest that the presence of thatdisputed liquid water might have led to current microbialactivity at or near the surface.

I know that some people who are totally sold on the paradigmof a cold, bone dry, martian surface, are unlikely to see anythingbut rocks in the images I’ve presented here, but I hope thatthere are others who will carefully study the pictures, think ontheir implications and hopefully carry the process forwardtowards what I think will be the eventual overturn of the currentparadigm of a dry, cold and lifeless Mars.

I think in this process it is important to recognize that there isa growing community of Scientists and others who considerthat it is indeed possible that there is current life existing on ornear the surface of Mars.

Indeed, I was surprised to learn that there is a group in NASAthat has proposed a Mars Extant Life (MEL) strategy tocoordinate the search for such life using an approach thatidentifies Earth Analog (EA) environments on Mars and tosystematically search for life in the 13 EA environmentsidentified so far.

The very comprehensive paper that the group produced tosupport this initiative is listed in the references. It is probablynoteworthy that if their strategy had been in effect for the MERrover mission, much closer looks would have been taken ofseveral areas at both Gusev and Meridiani which were actuallyglossed over or bypassed in the search for ancient water.

I hope to produce a second edition of this ebook that willextend the coverage to include images and theoretical insightsthat will hopefully be provided by Curiosity from the Galecrater in the near future. But of course that will depend on thesuccess of the MSL Curiosity mission.

I think that the atmospheric and edaphic environment in andnear the landing ellipse at Gale crater should be much moreconducive to hosting clear signs of the existence of currentwater and thereby signs of fossil or even extant life, than wasevident at Meridiani planum. Merely studying a slope streak ora fresh crater comprehensively might even be enough.

The insights that are advanced in this eBook, quixotic thoughthey may now appear to be, would not have been possiblewithout the vehicle of Marsroverblog and the numerousdiscussions about life on Mars there.

The inputs by Hortonheardawho, Barsoomer, Fred, MPJ, Mann,Serpens, Ben and Kye Goodin into this process are gratefullyappreciated.

GLOSSARYNASA-JPL NASA -Jet Propulsion Laboratory - US Government

MER Mars Exploration Rovers, MerA and MerB

MERA Spirit Rover

MERB Opportunity Rover

Pancam Twin Panoramic Science Camera

MI Microscopic Imager

MRB The Mars Rover Blog internet forum

Meridiani planum Area on Mars in which MerB (Opportunity) landed

Gusev Area on Mars in which MerA (Spirit) landed

Blueberries Small grey-blue spheres dominating the landscape at Meridiani in bothsurface soil and within evaporite rocks

TSL Transient Slope Lineae (TSL), lines of stained surfaces of slopes of certain equatorialcraters on Mars

SOD Self Organizing Dust; dust oriented in geometric patterns left around ratholes,particularly on Evaporite rocks

GCMS Thermal volatilization Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

LR Viking Labelled Release experiment

RAT The process of grinding holes in a rock by the MER Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT)

Brush The process of brushing surface material from rock targets with the RAT

Microchannels Small channels containing fine regolith in cracks between evaporiterocks, usually mimicking flows of a fluid

LIST OF NON-MER IMAGESFig 4.1; Map of Mars - NASA / JPL *

Fig 6.1; Opportunity Max-Min Temperatures - NASA / JPL *

Fig 6.4; Transient Slope Lineae (TSLs) - NASA / JPL *

Fig 6.6; Frost at Viking site - NASA / JPL *

Fig 7.19; Map of Victoria Crater with dark streak areas - NASA / JPL *

Fig 7.28; Living Stromatolites - Public Domain, from Everything, Everywhere **.

Fig 8.7: Salt berries - post to MRB by r_Page

Fig 8.10; Oppy tracks comparison - Courtesy Hortonheardawho (MRB)

Fig 9.16; Particles in Meridiani soil - Courtesy Hortonheardawho

Fig 9.24; Desert Varnished rock - from Caltech edu web site **

Fig 9.30; Stromatolite - Courtesy Everyforkintheroad.org **

Fig 9.32; Typical Lichen thallus - Waynes Word Rock Lichens **

Fig 9.34; Stromatolite - Courtesy Everyforkintheroad.org **

Fig 9.36b; Rocks from rim of Fram crater. Courtesy Hortonheardawho

Fig 9.39; Interesting rocks - Courtesy Hortonheardawho

Fig 9.40; Trilobyte image - from the Virtual Fossil Museum**

Fig 9.42; Colourized Homestake Gypsum Vein- courtesy Hortonheardawho

Fig 10.1; Gale Crater Landing Ellipse - NASA / JPL *

Fig 10.2; Gale Crater strata - NASA / JPL *

* These images courtesy of NASA/JPL. No endorsement of anything in this book byNASA/JPL is claimed or implied

** Source URL of image is linked in references.

INTERNET REFERENCES

GENERALMarsroverblog forum websitehttp://www.marsroverblog.com/mars-forum/forum.html

Winston Small’s (LWS) smugmug photositehttp://lws.smugmug.com

Hortonheardawho’s Flickr photositehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/

Mann’s smugmug photositehttp://mann.smugmug.com/Photography/mars/100790_sx82t6#!i=3743021&k=oPkZ7

Exploratorium edu MER images websitehttp://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportunity/

NASA/JPL MER Opportunity raw images websitehttp://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity.html

NASA/JPL MER Opportunity images, the MER analyst’s notebookhttp://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/default.aspx?m=MERB

Stereophotmaker 3D viewer,http://stereophoto-maker.apponic.com/

ImageJ graphics packagehttp://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/

MARS IN MYTH AND THE PRESENTThe Planet Mars in Ancient Myth and Religion by Ev Cochranehttp://www.aeonjournal.com/mars.htm

Cydonia (region of Mars), Wikipaediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)

VIKING AND THE LR EXPERIMENT

RESEARCH ON MARS – Papers by Gilbert V. Levin, Ph.D.http://gillevin.com/mars.htm

Viking Experiment May Have Found Life’s Building Blocks on Mars After All byNancy Atkinson, September 3, 2010.http://www.universetoday.com/72811/viking-experiment-may-have-found-life%e2%80%99s-building-blocks-on-mars-after-all/#ixzz1wx7lKo3G

Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch says that extraterrestrial life has already beenfound. Seed Magazine.comhttp://seedmagazine.com/content/print/we_are_not_alone/

Low biotoxicities of analog soils suggest that the surface of mars may be habitable forterrestrial microorganisms.http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2012/pdf/1507.pdf

Ramifications of a sterile Mars- Gilbert Levin, 2011http://gillevin.com/Mars/SPIE_Paper_2011_as_Submitted.pdf

Reanalysis of the Viking results suggests perchlorate and organics at mid latitudes onMars; Rafael Navarro-Gonzálezhttp://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010JE003599.shtml

Astronomy Cast - Viking Landers transcript, may 2012http://www.astronomycast.com/2012/05/ep-258-viking-landers/

The Viking labelled release experiment and life on Mars, gilbert. levin asu.eduhttp://gillevin.com/Mars/THE_VIKING_MISSION_AND_LIFE_ON_MARS.pdf

Color and Feature Changes at Mars Viking Lander Site; gilbert v. levin and patriciaann straathttp://gillevin.com/Mars/Reprint87-color-files/colorReprint87.htm

THE MARS EXPLORATION ROVERSMars Exploration rovers mission home; NASA JPLhttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

EXTREMOPHILESEncyclopedia of Earth, Extremophile articlehttp://www.eoearth.org/articles/view/160977/

Surviving the conditions on Mars. by Staff Writers; Mars Daily, Apr 30, 2012http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Surviving_the_conditions_on_Mars_999.html

Earth’s toughest life could survive on Mars; Mike Malaska, The Planetary Society.http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/20120515-earth-life-survive-mars.html

Comparative Survival Analysis of Deinococcus Radiodurans and the HaloarchaeaNatrialba Magadii and Haloferax Volcanii, Exposed to Vacuum UltravioletIrradiation:http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.6590

Scientists find microbes in lava tube living in conditions like those on Marshttp://phys.org/news/2011-12-scientists-microbes-lava-tube-conditions.html.

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Mars meteorite similar to bacteria etched rocks - Mars Daily

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Geomycology: fungi in mineral substrata; Euan p. Burford, martin kierans & geoffreym. gaddhttp://www.fungi4schools.org/Reprints/Mycologist_articles/Post-16/Environment/V17pp098-107fungi_in_minerals.pdf

The benefits of looking at Mars close-up; Dr Beda A. Hofmannhttp://www.planete-mars-suisse.com/crbst_117.html

Raman Spectroscopy Unveils Evidence for Microbes in Desert Rocks; Barry EDiGregorio.http://www.microbemagazine.org/index.php/01-2011-current-topics/3029-raman-spectroscopy-unveils-evidence-for-microbes-in-desert-rocks

The toughest life on Earth; by Staff Writers; Space Daily June 25 2012.http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_toughest_life_on_Earth_999.html

Mars Exploration Rover - Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover

Mars, Facts and Information about the Planet Marshttp://www.space.com/47-mars-the-red-planet-fourth-planet-from-the-sun.html/

Bacterial mat the size of Greece found on Pacific floor; Fred Pearce, New Scientisthttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627574.100-bacterial-mat-the-size-of-greece-found-on-pacific-floor.html

Mars Extant-Life Campaign Using an Approach Based on Earth-Analog Habitats;Lawrence A. Palkovic’, Thomas J. Wilson NASA.gov

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Life's molecules could lie within reach of Mars Curiosity rover; Space Ref, July 5th2012http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=37694

New Discovery Supports Possibility of Microbial Life on Mars by Nancy Atkinson onJune 4, 2010; Universe today.http://www.universetoday.com/65823/new-discovery-supports-possibility-of-microbial-life-on-mars/

Possibilities for life on Mars - a surprising new microbe; R. G Clarke, Cosmoquest XForums, 2005http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php/15752-Possibilities-for-life-on-Mars-a-surprising-new-microbe

WATER ON MARSWater on Mars - Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

Mars Water? NASA Probe Shows Brown Streaks in Martian Craters; ABC newshttp://abcnews.go.com/Technology/nasa-mars-probe-finds-evidence-water-martian-soil/story?id=14233931

Kelly Beatty; Is water flowing on Mars; Sky and telescope, July 2012;http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/117806243.html

Spectral evidence for liquid water on Mars; 42nd LPSC (2011); N.O. Renna et al.http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1537.pdf

NASA spacecraft reveals dramatic changes in Mars’ atmosphere; SpaceRef april2011http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=33388

Wetter Mars’ atmosphere shakes up old climate models; Nola Taylor Redd;Space.comhttp://www.space.com/13126-mars-atmosphere-water-discovery.html

Mars’ surprise - Atmosphere is supersaturated with water vapour; The daily Galaxy,September 2011http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/09/mars-missing-athmosphere-new-causes-discovered.html

Mars climate sounder confirms a martian weather prediction; Emily Lakdawalla - ThePlanetary Society.http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2011/3234.html

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Large amounts of water ice found underground on Mars; Irene Antonenko; UniverseToday Jan 2012.http://www.universetoday.com/93059/large-amounts-of-water-ice-found-underground-on-mars/

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Salty soil on Mars could be slurping water from the atmosphere. Nancy Atkinson;Universe Today; Feb 2012.http://www.universetoday.com/93848/salty-soil-on-mars-could-be-slurping-water-from-the-atmosphere/

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mapping the water content of the martian surface using mars express omega r. e.milliken; lpsc 2005http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1370.pdf

Mars's Ice Patchy, Water Cycle Quite Active, Study Reveals; Stefan Lovgren forNational Geographic News, May 2, 2007http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070502-mars-ice.html

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Spirit Mars Rover Mission: Overview and selected results from the northern HomePlate Winter Haven to the side of Scamander craterhttp://web.mit.edu/mobility/publications/rea_spirit_2010JE003633.pdf

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THE AUTHOR

Winston Small is a retired Environmental Biologist who hashad an interest in Space Travel and Mars from childhood. TheMER mission was an opportunity for him, and for many other“marsaholics” around the globe, to explore the surface of Marsusing the “eyes” of the MER rovers, through the kind courtesyof NASA/JPL.

From the onset of the mission, even while recognizing that itwas a geology mission searching for signs of ancient water, itwas clear to him that the images beamed from Mars appearedto be telling a story of a dynamic living Mars that wassomewhat at odds with the paradigm of a dead planet.

This ebook, through the use of several colour composites, seeksto show the other side of the story hidden in the MER images.

SHORT REVIEW by MPJ

Winston, thanks for your really interesting ebook.Your thoughts and observations written down here is whatexploration should be about, to look over the rim of a tea cup(beyond the mission goals) especial in that fortunate situationof a vastly increased mission lifetime. I think you have noobjections for me to share this with my academic peers.This ebook is a culmination of what makes this board (MarsRover Blog (MRB)) my favorite discussion board regardingMars - open minded, yet reasonable discussions about actualobservations rather than just a competition for the prettiestMars’ pictures.