On Wednesday, Curiosity detected a sudden increase in methane in the Martian atmosphere. The spike was three times higher than those previously recorded, as in the 2013 event.
The measurements taken last Wednesday gave values around 21 ppb, a quantity higher than a few orders of magnitude above the threshold of detectability and therefore very reliable!
At NASA, however, caution reigns and before launching important announcements have modified the programs of Curiosity to collect additional measurements to confirm the event itself.
Despite this caution, it seems that both the Mars Express and the Trace Gas Orbiter have “bothered” to fly over the crater Gale to make independent measurements on the concentration of methane in the atmosphere of Mars, although at the moment we do not know the results.
Curious is the fact that in these days Curiosity has also photographed rocks with morphological aspects “special”, perhaps the two things are related?
I expect that the argument raises a lot of “dust” in the coming days …
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/science/nasa-mars-rover-life.html
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