will stand up to a vote in e congress, he ought to pick up the phone and call speaker ryan and say schedule it for a vote in the house and let's see what the representatives and american people say. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8 eastern on c- span2. >> nasa scientists announced last week the latest scientific discovery from the space agencies's mars rover. named curiosity, it landed on the red planet in 2012 as part of national's mars science laboratory mission. scientists talked about what they found and the possibilities for more discoveries. this is about an hour. >> welcome. we are live at nasa from two location we are at goddard space carnet the doctor is the director of the exploration division and principle

investigator for the salmon community and i have jeff fer who has one of the coolest titles which is an astro biologist and anr location today as well nasa jet propulsion laboratory in california. and here we have dr. chris webster who is a senior research scientist at jpl and project scientist for the sign teary i am an astronomer here at nasa and one of the things i will say off the bat is none of us live in a vacuum. we have our social media accounts and we are aware of the interest this generated but i will tell you right now, we are not announcing today is the detection of life. we are not going to be talking about that. what we are talking about are some really exciting new results that have to do with organic molecules. now organic molecules are what we understand is the building blocks of life. and even if we are not announcing the detection of life i think it's a discoveries we will talk about are important in finding out whether or not mar was habitable or might still be. i will lead it off with paul

who is going to talk to us about what we know and what we don't though about mars. so paul, straight up, what have we found? >> really exciting times. i will reenforce what you said. life organic compounds on earth just so much bear the imprint of life that it is very natural for us to equate or find organic sun mars with finding life. but that's not the -- that's not the bottom line of what we are trying to get out here. bottom line is we have greatly expanded our search for organic compounds which are fundamental to our search for life. and it's really interesting kind of two resus one result is organics from billion-year- old rocks that got trapped in the rocks in an ancient lake of billions of years ago. and the second is of simpleist organic methane and the two results that cries is going to talk b let me add a little

context. it was kind of -- kind of august 2012 more than five years ago we came into mars and there were that exciting 7 minutes of terror and we land safely on the surface thanks to the engineer team that got us there. but the objective of the mission was to explore a habitable place on mars. we found caves formed by water. rover curiosity is capable of taking pictures and measure the elemental composition of the rocks and does mineralogy and what we have done even though we found many things we will talk about today which is the mars experiment, we essentially found out very early this was a habitable environment. water has been there for a long time. with our experiment we found

interesting things. for example, how old the rocks were, how long they have been exposed to cosmic creation and measure amounts of life versus heavy elements tell us how the atmosphere escaped over billion of years. and we kept searching for organics and we found methane and simple organic molecules before but we expanded the search with the results we will talk about today. so it's really exciting. >> so he paul mentioned the results we are talking about today and one of the things that's important you can be involved in the discussion. so throughout the broadcast today you will see me looking at my ipad we are taking live questions so if you are social media use hashtag ask nasa. or if you are joining us on facebook, put your questions in the facebook comments and we will get to as many of them as we can. we will take questions live from the media a little later in the show. so we are live looking at the questions and i can give them to the scientists that's appropriate. now jen. tell us about why it's

significant we found organics on mars. >> we found organic molecules in rocks from an ancient lake bed. those organic molecules could have come from life. we don't know there was life on mars. there is the organic molecules we found are not specifically evidence of life. because there are other sources of making those molecules including things that are nonbiological in nature. things like meteorites, or even rock processs. we could attribute geology by itself without life. and the information we have doesn't tell us which source is responsible for what we have. >> thank you. so, another one of the major detections and discoveries we talk about today involves methane on mars and that's mething we think of as natural gas. simple organic molecule and i will talk to chris at jpl. so, chris was instrumental in the discovery before of methane spikes the level of methane thatwent up so you reported

before on the methane spes. tell us about what today is different and noteworthy about methane on mars. >> every chapter in the meth ion on -- methane on mar has been different. when they looked at it in spikes as you mentioned. everyone of them has been a surprise and problematic in the sense frustrating because none of them were repeatable in time and space. they seem to show methane wasmisbehaving at a sporadic or random pulses and patches were showing up. so today, we are announcing a discovery of a repeatable identifiable seasonal pathen in the messurements and we can look at graphic and see it's in the lower background level because most of the time we are not looking at spikes and we see this low background level

you can see from the winter to the summer the growth and the big surprise is not only have we got this wonderful repeatability but the seasonal cycle changes by a factor of 3. that's huge completely unexpected and what it does is gives us a key to unlocking the mysteries associated with mars methane because now we have something to test our models and understanding against. we are we will hear more about that later. >> one of the things you are hearing a lot about is organic. it's something people are familiar about. i will talk to jennifer. tell us a bit about what we mean by organic and tell us about what is so significant about finding organics on mars. >> so organic molecules to a chemist are simply molecules formed of carbon and hydrogen. sometimes there are other things that go if there such as sulfur,fos prows but to a --

frost frows but to -- frost prows but we are not talking about organic stuff at grocery store the pesticide free produce we get. they are different things. >> so, it's amazing. this is one of the engineer feats of the curiosity rover is we are finding molecules. we have a chemical laboratory how do we identify them on another planet. >> the curiosity rover drills into rock layers and when it does it produce as rock powder and that is put into the oven and heated. when it is heated it produces gases at are in and you can see the gases come from tubes in the entrance where electrons ionize the material. as a result, it of if you have molecules that willr split into pieces and the mass spec tom trier can identify what the pieces are and we can put them back together to understand what the original molecule was.

there's another feature of sam. that's it has grass crow mat graph that looks a little like this. it's really long tube. and it has in a hole about the width of a human ir. the column allows molecules to go through it and it goes down the long, long tube and they come out the other side they come out one by one. they are separated. and when that happens, they go into the mass spec tom trier and we can identify individual molecules. gcs in sam were belt by our french colleagues from the french national center for national research and it's because of the gcs we were able to identify molecules that we are reporting on today. >> in fact we have one of the first questions from social media from john we were talking about drilling into the surface of mars with the arm of sam how far into the surface do we go? >> 5 centimeters that's about as far as we can go. 5 sent meeters. >> we will talk more about why

that's significant. there may be more interesting things farther down. the thing that amazes me and i remember well the landing of the curiosity rover as one of the best nights or mornings of my life. you showed meet toonie coil that had to actually land on mars at one point going through the atmosphere. there was a snap of g-forces like up to 10 times the force of gravity. we land the incredibly sensitive instruments on mars and i want to talk a little more about that. we will go to our friend at jpl. where are you and tell us about the curiosity rover the larger rover. >> hi, there. yeah, probably you are wondering what's behind me. what you see is the test model of the curiosity rover. it's twin basically that we used for testing here on earth. the one on mars is in a place called gail crater. we sent it there it's 100 mile diameter hole in the ground. that formed when a giant impact occurred on mars about 4 billion years ago. what drew us to it is the mountain in the middle of it.

this was not there when the crater formed. in fact, it formed a sediment was carried in by rivers and streams, and then deposited into the giant lake that filled the crater as this settled from the water it built up the layers that made up the mountains. each layer of the mountain is younger than the one below it. so by climbing this mountain with the rover we can read the history of mars and climbing is what we have been doing throughout most of curiosity's mission. we are now a thousand feet above the crater floor as high as the sky scrapeers in downton los angeles and we get the amazing view. they drill the mountain and the samples were taken from the lowest part of the mountain about a few years ago in 2015. and it has taken a few years to get an understanding of the results so we can describe them today. >> and there's a reason the crater was selected there was

something about the fascination of rocks and why was this site selected? sure. we had hints -- >> sure. we had hints water was involved in interacting with the rocks because of the orbiters at mars before. so there's a mars reconnaissance orbiter and mars express and those are the instruments -- orbiters that had instruments capable of detecting clay minerals at site. some of the layers in the mounten are made of clay minerals with which which means water interacted with them. we weren't sure if rivers and lakes actually existed and curiosity has shown lakes existed for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. >> i have a question from social media so john from pays book says tell us more about the -- facebook tells us about the tweaks in the arm there was problem with the drilling arm and you are on mars how did you fix this. >> this is worth a press conference of its own.

it's amazing we vethis week to tell you about the drill and wonderful results from the last few years of exploration as well. in late 2016 we realized one of the mainmotorsof the drill was no longer functioning reliably. this meant the drill was dead. and a big part of what we had accomplished on mars we no longer would be able to do. it's not just that we fix something or tweaked something. we had to invent a new way of drilling. and that's a remarkable story that i have to give all the cred it to engineers at jpl who did that work so for a year and a half they tried to fix the motor. and then invented a new way of drilling that didn't use the motor and just this week, we have achieved success. we have now successfully drilled and analyzed samples with the laboratories once again. >> so we are talking about drilling down and analyzing the samples. for those a fan organic chemistry we will dive into the details a little bit. jen, tell me about the details what was detected. >> right. so we detected a variety of

molecules including some with a carbon linked inner ring structure and others that includes carbon chains and here's an example. propane. now, these are just representative of moleculessmaller bits and piece of molecules because we see them coming off the sample at high temperatures but they are telling us is part of something larger. a macro molecule. and this is an example of something we find or earth. now we find examples of this on earth in things like coal and black shell. these two ings. and we also find them in meteorites. so they are common. this tells us that there is organic material in the rock in a different form than what sam detected. and what it means is it was in a robust form. this form of organic matter resistance to changes. now, the other thing we found was an example of the datawe

get from sam we can tell after the molecules go through the column, the truck sture -- structure we use this information to find out this structure. revefocashons and sulfur. sulfur looks like this when it is in rock form. but in the sample, the sulfur is probably in the organic molecules themselves. and that's important. because sulfur actually is the material that can help bind all this small piece of organic molecules together in something really big like that large molecule i showed you. and sulfur helps to resist oxidation. that's really important for our discovery. because we are looking at ancient rocks that are 3 1/2 billion years old d we found organic materials inside them. but we drilled in the top 5 centimeters and in that top 5 centimeters the surface is expod -- exposed to ionizing

radiation generating free radicals and objection daunts and all of those can degrade organic materials. and so that rock that's been at the surface for an extended period of time, we are talkingtens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. and that's a long time for all these changes to happen. there lot of people who thought we weren'to fine the organic molecules that we did. for instance, viking started this quest back in 1976. looking for organimolecules. we -- curiosity continued the quest and now we have a diverse set of molecules we can now start to understand a little bit more about how this material is preserved and where else we might look to get more. this is a pretty amazing thing. you are work on mars that's very hard. people know that mars has almost no atmosphere compared to the earth. 1% of the atmospheric pressure and high radiation levels because mars is not protected the way of rth is by a activemagnetic field and we

have a atmosphere work on mars. so radiation of the sun gets how far into the soil. >> it's coming from the sun that's coming from the galaxy. >> right. >> and it can extend a me and a half down. maybe a little more depends on what model you use. but there are places that it can go deeper down we may able to tap into molecules that are not disrupted by the radiation itself. and the rover is a example it will drill two meter feet this is the european space agency's km mars rover and it will have the opportunity to examine the materials at surface and on the way down to see if there's comparisons. we will lrn how important it is -- learn how important it is where we have to refine our analysis and where we will understand the preservation issue and how it affects things at surface compared to things further down. but most importantly, if there are biosignatures in the organic material or associated with it, we are going have a better chance of understanding

that if we get some materials that are not exposed to all the radiation. >> we are finding very interesting chemistry right up on the surface of mars and it's promise of even more interestingchemistries to come if we get deep darn into that. we are looking at the crater and how do the organics get here. we are find the organic molecules how did they get there. >> these are a lot of layers put down in a ancient lake and weassessed the lake was there for a long period of time. hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of years we are not sure. but there's lake sediment for a gigantic lake. organic materials can come into the lake through rivers. it could be wind-blown in, or they can be formed in the actual lake itself by things like biology. now there's three different source of organic materials. one is biology. one of them could be meteorites that are falling into the surface and being directly

deposited and the other one is a rock forming process that might general ray organic material on their own and might be the ones broughtin by rivers. we don't have enough information from the observations we have made to tell what the source is and how it got in there. >> so we found this goodlocation to look for organics on mars and we will talk about the seasonal methane. are your discoveries about the source of organics and the site is that related to the meth apes? >> yes and no. methanes. >> yes and no. >> if you take it in the ancient rock and you just generalize it. we have found organic material in the subsurface and that's representative of organic materials throughout a grander area. and that's carbon that could go through various processs and make its way to the surface and form and turn into methane and seep into the atmosphere. now the detection that chris is going to talk about is about

mod ren day methane as opposed to ancient signals what i discovered in the cks. >> all right so we will go over to chris webster at jpl so chris, tell me a bit about the seasonality of methane and give us detail about the new discovery. >> well, i thought i would tell you right away that we have seen the seasonal variation and we have tried to look at the data and come up with some explanation. and we have been able to rule out some of the sources. we don't actually think that delivery into planetary dust that can produce methane in the atmosphere. we don't think that's important because we wouldn't expect to see a large seasonal variation. we might see 20%. but we are seeing this massive change in the methane signal. and so, what we consider we look at the data and the idea that the that best fits the data is subsurface storage. so way under the ground under

mars, the methane is trapped. it may be trapped as other materials. we don't know if that methane is ancient. we don't know if it's modern. it could be either. we also don't know if that methane was created from rock water rock chemistry or it was created by microbe. we cannot distinguish that. so, the methane leak or seeps up to the surface, we believe, and finds its way through cracks and fissures and when it gets to the surface, we are in a situation where the surface temperature can mod yew late or amplify the release of methane. this is a exciting time because we have this seasonal cycle to contrain some of the theories, and source and things of this important gas. >> chris wairnghts to talk more about trying to distinguish between it's biological ornonbiological source of the

methane but how did you detect this? in the case of jen's work they brought martian soil into the oven and heated it up but how is the men agent detected. >> we are ingesting from the air and if you look at curiosity, around about waist height there's two valves and these valves allow the martian atmosphere into the sample cell. once it is into sam and there we have infrared laser beams that multipass and 81 times between the mirrors and that amplifies the sensitivity so when you look at the laser lights on the detector you can scan it and look for the spectrum of methane. and the resolution spectrum resolution is so high we see individual methane lines and in particular, we see a fingerprint of three lines together that can only be from methane. so a measurement is

unambiguous. signals come from methane and nothing else. and secondly we measure them with high precision. >> let's go to the two different scenarios of what's causing the methane. one we have a seasonal e because ctiaunder e surface of mars would be more active in the summer. is that the idea? >> that's a possible idea. but, again, we cannot distinction wish that from des continuing wish that from -- distinguish that from the reaction of water with the juice and hydrogen. once you get the hydrogen released in the that reaction, it can be catalyzed -- methane but the a biological root or through enzymes in the microbes in the cell potential. >> so puting that in simpler terms if water is interacting with volcanic minerals you can

get a similar methane that comes up in the summer? >> yes. yes. that's exactly right. >> right. >> so we are hoping we will see more -- we will get more results in the future on this. especially from other missions and as far as testing for the biological source or not, there are severamore steps that could be made. weir we can look at carbon for example the suggestive of biological activity and we can look at accompanyment of other gases. so we have -- and we can sit on the surface and curiosity may be one day will see a plume that is large enough where we can measure the carbon ratio ourselves. there's lots of exciting ways forward but at this moment, again, the biological option is being held and hasn't been ruled out. >> exciting results about

themethane and seasonal variation i want to say to anybody who has been joining us we are live a nasa and goddard space light carnet nasa jet propulsion laboratory and we will take your questions lie. usual hashtag ask nasa-joining us on facebook put the questions in the comments and we will get to as many of those as we can. so we talked a bit about the latest results from the mars curiosity rover. one of the things i want to mention briefly is we have a mission to mars on the way right now. may 5th we launched the insight mission and it will arrive november 26th of thiscoming year. and the exciting thing about the insight mission is it's looking at a different definition theword life and looking to see if the planet mars is geologically alive. and by that we mean are there mars quakes, is there any activity below the surface? how quickly is the interior of mars losing heat through geological processs. so look for that coming this fall. and we will have another landing on mars a. geological mission to see what the

activity geologically is underneath surface of mars. okay. before we go on i want to make one more trip back to the mars curiosity rover and so, the amazing thing about this seasonal variation of methane is you need to be there for many seasons. so tell butts lifetime of the curiosity rover and give us a sense of what amazing accomplishment it has been. >> sure. yeah. this is really wonderful to have this discovery that took so many years to not only take the measurements but to analyze as well. the measurements that chris described come from a instrumentwithin the sam instrument suite on mars and we have takeen about 30 measurements with this instrument over the course of the mission. we are planning one on mars today. so, without having the rover survive for 6 earth years, three mars years which is 3 times longer than the original mission, we would have never been able to discomfort amazing seasonal patterns that are the

heart of what chris described. and finally, i just wanted to add a few more words to jen's discoveries. one of the things that makes that so special is the role how it fulfills the role curiosityplayed within the mars exploration program. nasa charged this mission with detecting organics on mars and we have done that and expanded the range of organics we know of today. but it was more than that, too. we also wanted to understand how organic molecules organic matter on mars, that was incorporated in rocks years ago would be tvivehe or would be there for us to discover all the years later. what are the processs that an environment allowed it to resist the deeing re gation and that's remark -- degradation and that's remarblable she can -- remarkable she can determine what types of molecules and environments that allowed the moll cues to persist through today. and this is not -- molecules to

persight through todayched and this is not only important for curiosity but important for future mars missions who will seek direct signs of life. missions like xmrs and mars 2020 this gives us confidence that when those missions get to mars, there can be something for them to discover. >> so ashwin we mentioned the martian year is longer than the earth queer and the martian day tell us about how -- year and the martian day tell us about how different it is. be a you have -- and you have personal stories relating to this. >> yeah. there's -- enormous number of similarities between mars and earth they are simpler. and they are coincidental. mars has 24 1/2 hour day and has a tilt on the axis about 25 tees -- degrees similar to earth at 23 degrees which makes the days and seasons remarkably earth like. it makes it incredibly interesting to operate a rover in the most efficient way on mars because the best way of

doing that is actually live on a 20 -- which we did over the first 90 days of the mission before we started to all go crazy. >> 40 minutes later every day would disrupt your sleep i would think. >> that's right. >> someone just joined us where are you? give us another sense where you are standing and what room you are in now. >> sure. we are at the jet propulsion laboratory. we are in place called the mars yard. and it doesn't look like a yardin here because we are in shed where the twin model of curiosity lives. so behind us you see the enmaggie and she is very much like the one that's on mars. especially in terms of the software on board, all the electronics. we have some of the instruments here as well and this model can drive out into the yard and we have used it for tests including all solving anomalies on the surface of mars. this is the model that was used to teach the rover on mars how to drive and navigate. we can use it for a lot of things when we don't want to use the precious time and

resourcers of the actual rover on mars. >> well, let's take questions but before we do that i want to go back to paul for one more last thing. we talked about landing this amazing rover on lab and you have a chemical laboratory mars. how did we get the sensitive chemical laboratory on the planet? >> let me get to that question. you know you are asking a lot of questions. let me have you throw one in my direction first and no one will ask and what did you do this morning, paul. >> what did you do this morning, paul. >> thanks for asking i thought you would never ask. what we did this morning actually was look at data that came down from curiosity that was deposited into sam and has been months and months. so like ashwin mentioned, we are in the process of getting the drill back in order and tremendously excited about that. search for organics is going to go on. getting back to the other question, which is what it took to get the -- i mean sam instruments is very

complicated. it took a huge team of scientists and engineers and software programmers it's an international team. we put this instrument together at nasa goddard. but chris webster's team at jet propulsion lab and our french colleagues developed a gas spectrumter and this morning they called in because they re supporting operations of our instruments from there. so he what we did was we spent several years putting this together. assembled it at goddard and tested at goddard and put it in environmental chambers matching the surface of mars and tested the of of software and brought to jepropulsion lab and this image shows sam. that's the gold coated box about the size of a microwave oven and gently lowered into the rover. rover is upside down at that point. and we lowered sam into it and

did more testing. we put a rover in fact in a big environmental chamber at jpl d when we were sure everything was perfect, then the rover was ready to ship to the cape and everything was launched. to see everybody there in bunny suits. the reason they are in the white suits is we didn't want to bring our skin oils and everything else to mars because then jen would have to report that we were finding things that looked like they came from chris webster or someone else in the room at jpl. it took a lot of work and great team work and several nationsjoining us. >> when you were talking about leads to one of the social moda questions. how did you vair fight experiments have not been compromised before reaching on mars or after landing on mars. >> yeah. what we do is we bring alongstandards and we do what any good analytic chemist does we run blanks.

we look to make sure none of the residual organics of the instruments producing the signals. we run a full sequence of runs, but we don't put sample in the cup and see what we got. so we work hard to make sure what we are seeing is from mars and we are very confident that what we are seeing is from mars. >> there's a lot of questions coming in right now. and you are welcomed to give questions you have. either use the hashtag ask nasa or if you are on facebook put in the questions in the comments. so there are several questions for many people. so i will not name you about methane detecting can it be used as a fuel for other mission is it useful for human presence on mars should we go to chris for that? you want to take a stab at that question, chris? >> well, of course there is not right now we are seeing low background levels. we are not seeing a lot of methane. methane is always useful as a fuel. but the ability to extract it from the atmosphere would be --

would not be efficient. but if there was a way to access subsurface reservoirs then it's new ball game. but that's really speculation at this point. ess since we are at jpl another one to ashwin. we have a question if you could add one more tool to the rover, what would it have been? what was the thing you wanted the rover to have that you don't happen to have. >> that's a tough one. there's probably a list of things -- i am going deflect and say the next thing we want to do on mars is exactly what we are doing with the mars 2020 mission. building on all the results from habitability and organics and possibility of life that curiosity has opened up and looking ahead to having instruments on mars that are built to look for those signs of life. >> so jen this is is a good one for an astro biologist. that is difficult question. you have on beganic molecules

what signs do you look for that might hint they are base on life. >> all life is based on organic molecules. we know that's not the only way to make them. if we are going to look for life the f thing to do is look for signatures associated with organic materials. a that w part of the reason it was significant when we found organics materials. it helps us guide where we are going to look for more of these. now in the signatures, they might be things about the chemistry of the organic materials, or perhaps there are things about how the organic materials are stuck together in shapes, how they are packaged maybe it's about the isotopes and there's a suite of chemical and fiscal things we can measure that might indicate -- physicalthings we can measure that might indicate signatures of life. >> jen went up to one of the fartherest most northern springs a hot spring way up in the cold area. and then we put some of this material in the spectrumter and the patterns showed up and

shows the links of the carbon changes and shingles that's a pattern for life. those are one of the things we will look for. >> there's another experiment on sam we have not used yet. it's one of the chemistry experiments and if those types of things are left behind in the or began ingle material that we come across, assuming -- organic material that we come across assuming we will come across some. maybe we will get hints if the right compounds are there. >> we have a media question so if i could ask for that question we will try to have an audio feed at the moment. >> thank outfirst question is from chris van cleave from drshkris van cleave from -- kris van cleave from cbs. >> forgive me but if you can translate this into terms my grandmother understands. why is methane so exciting and what is it you found that is so

intriguing about this organic chemical or impound molecule that's different than what we knew-- >> okay. should we go to chris for the methane question did you hear that? >> yes i would start right away by saying whenever you have a oxidizing atmosphere and see reduced compounds like methaneor hydrogen sul fight they are exciting. and in particular, for the meth -- sul fight, they are excite -- sul fied they are exciting. and in particular from cows or sheeps or termites et cetera, because of that there's always been this interest in mars methane because it's potential biological origin. and that's true also because we know it only can last #00 years. so if we see methane in the martian atmosphere, that means it -- something is happening today that's being released or created.

and i will hand over to paul to answer the second part. >> well let me answer that. i mean, on earth, rice chris mentioned moat -- like chris mentioned most comes from rice paties and different pro-- padies and other processs but most of the okay general on earth comes from biology. billions of years ago, the bacteria got serious and they started to crearchg away and so in our atmosphere, we have both accommodation of methane and oxygen. and that's what some of the folks who are building the big telescopes through the james web for example that are going to be in space look at exo planets they will look for oxidizing and reducing things that might be evidence of life. so it's fundamental and interesting and i sure hope grandma understood that. >> i understand we have another question from the media that will come over audio. >> thank you next is nancy

atkinson speaker.com. your line is opened. >> hi. there was a similar announcement of detection of methane and organic materials back in 2014 also by the curiosity rover. how is this announcement different or how have you built the fiings from 2014 for this detection? >> i know we were talking about that beforehand. a very good question. jen you want to take that? >> sure. in 2014 we reported the discovery of chlorinated molecules that are carbon structures with a chlorine attached to them. and there was a few. it was a significant discovery. it was a first time we were able to confirm organic molecules on mars. it was the first time. and we ha been ok for this r a ve long time with the hops we would find it with the viking instruments in 1976 and with curiosity in landing on a lake bed, that we could

actually discover these. now, we were left with what do these mean? the thing is that the chlorine molecules is not what you find in natural samples. and we weren't sure what the significance was at the time. however, it did give us a lot of motivation to keep looking. there have to be other layers in the creator other layers of the lake sediment and we wanted to find more organic molecules. and that's exactly what happened. we drove 4 miles ay, we started down at the lowest part of the crater and we drove 4 miles away and got to the base of the mountain, and the first layers that we looked at contained all of the organic material that we are worting it be reporting today. we have essential -- reporting today. we have essentially expanded on the inventory and we have a better sense of how they werepreserved in the rocks. >> i should mention your report, jen, showed significantly greater abundance than we detected before. and one more thing to add is in almost every experiment we do,

as we heat up the sample in the little cup we see a big oxygen signal and that comes from a mineral that breaks apart a contains chlorine and oxygen. but the hut oxygen can react with some of the organics and produce carbon die objectionize and that's called combustion. and what jen did with part of the analysis was look at the high temperatures release of organics that might have escaped some of the destruction. but there's things there we are not seeing. so that's motivating our desire to get back and with different techniqueslook for a more comprehensive suite of organics and figure out where they came from. >> and chris, would you like to continue your answer why what we are announcing today is different than what as seasonality of the health and i? >> it's different -- methane? >> it's different because we were see spikes and we had ideas but we couldn't contrain them because they occurred

occasionally. now we have measured the background level of the two years so we know the total amount of methane in the atmosphere is constrained by that. it's a low average value for only .4 parts. and it changes a lot that the total amount is low so that constrains the magnitude of pulses and spikes elsewhere that would mix into that atmosphere. so this is a very important observation. the fact it changes so dramatically, the factor of 3 is -- has got to be duplicated by models that explain it. we do think that the spikes and the low background seasonal cycle are related. quite conceivable that the same reservoirs are seeping methane up to the surface are also occasionally causing large pulses to. of gas to be released. >> thank you. and i understand we have another media question. so we will go to the audio line. >> thank you our next question

is from irish television. your line is open. >> thanks very much. if i -- as i understand the take away is confirmation of the seasonal of things and noticeably detection of biothemes in the subsoil. so if i could ask what follow- up investigations specifically from the europeans could support andadd to this specifically the gas orbiter presumably can do the kind of iceo to being aanalysis you can shall iceo topic analysis what you can and can that contribute and still withthat but in the newture is the grass on exo bars the same as the ones on

msl and can it to the work you say needs to be done. >> let me take the first shot and chris may want to jump in. great to hear somebody saying methane instead of like methane like chris web hester does. but starting with the exo mars mission we are very proud of the work that our team did at gored to deliver a mass spectrumter which is planned to launch. and we greatly expand the text next. >> we use to look at sm pells that come up from -- next year and we used to look at samples and we use use -- use a laser to set a pulse of energy into the instrument and let ions

into a mass spectrumter with a high mass range and we can do things like find a high mass peak that's a soft ionation technique and do canned um mass peck stom try and -- spec tom try and we can break it apart and it's a powerful technique. we have a gcms and that also is a contribution from the french colleagues. they are really good at understanding how to do that separation of gases that jen talked about and they do thechemistry that tries to pull out interesting things like amino acids differently. we kind of have a lot of fluid in a cup. we puncture the cup and put sample in and they try tocontrol it better but having basically a little container that will brake apart at the right temperature and put the derivative in and do separation. the technology is advanced a

bit. for example, you know one thing we would be very interested in finding is the left and right- handedness of amino acid if we are lucky enough to find one. unlike they are not equivalent but in meteorites they are largely equivalent so with moma we are trying to solve that problem as well. so technology advances and our ability to think through what we can put in place on another planet advances. and maybe chris should talk about what the european trace orbiter which is look for methane what they hope to find i understand that's getting going and operation around mars and they have not been doing much reporting yet but they are getting the initial set of data. >> comment chris? >> yes. the exciting thing about pgo as it is called it's going to look at lot of gases in the atmosphere but especially methane in particular. as paul said they started to make measurements and we are waiting with bathed breath to see what they find. but they are going to, in particular, by mapping it

globally, they will be able to relate their measurements to ours. now, would be thing -- one thing they could do if they see the large plumes somewhere, even though they don't have a lot of spatial resolution they could potentially pinpoint hone in on an area mass that seems to be associated with the increase from the surface. that would be a very excitingfind because it tells us where we need to go to get the better signals when we look at it. and most important you asked about the carbon 1 isotope ratio. there's 100 times less carbon 13 methane than regular methane and if you want to measure that to 1%, you're stuck with this extremely high sensitivity need. so if the trace orbiter sees significant a methane they will be able to make the measurement. but if they see mainly the low background levels we are seeing of 4 parts per billion it's

going to be a challenge. >> so those are -- if you don't mind a limited time for questions we have had technical answer. actually i want to go to some of the middle school students that are live tweeting right now. so i need to call out mr. silvi's aerospace class. they are asking about the implication does it have implications for future colonization of mars or human presence. >> it could. when we have organic materials in the rocks that we found in gail crater there might be widerspread. and perhaps those would be a resource for humans. we don't know what it be. perhaps there are organize -- perhaps there are organisms we don't know about they might be helpful for farming. there might be organic materials used for fuel for farming or organisms including plants and carbon and turn it into their biomass. and perhaps there's another other ways of using it to generate fuels of the people there when used.

those have not been fully investigated yes. but i -- yet but it's a open book on what technologies we may use in the future. >> and a follow on question so could it be possible to bring samples back from mars? >> that's a great question, and ashwin is a perfect person to ask that because there's a program at jet propulling laboratory doing that. >> is it possible we may get samples back from mars? >> we sure hope so. one of the things we are working on here at jpl is the mission i told you earl cert mars 2020 rover. and it has the sophisticated instruments it's bringing with it to mars to do the investigations to look directly for signs of life. but it also is proposed to bring samples back to earth one day. it requires a follow on mission to do that something to land a rocket on mars and then to gather those samples from 2020 or where 2020 left them on the surface to bring them back to the rocket and then to blft off from mars. and then to rendezvous with the

space cap in mars' or not be a -- orbit and bring it back to earth. that's cool technology jpl has to invent in the neck couple decades to accomplish that. >> and this is something that leads onto that. we are planning to return to mars. we have a active mars exploration program and one of the things we are trying to do is figure out where the best places to land would be. so there's questions here about how we determine the best places where do we explore next on mars. >> one of the big questions is where else will we find organiccashons. and there are various environments we understand on earth as good places to collect organic materials that get preserved and then and it's good place for life. so for instance a. lake bed like what we found in gail crate sear perfect example. but high row -- hide row thermal places can provide chemicals that organisms can use. we see this is in the -- these in the ocean as higho thermal

vents. there are records of -- hide row thermal vents. there are records on mars -- hide row -- hydro thermal vents. there are records on mars about that. the science community is talking about where they want to go. and these are some of the ski scientist motivators for choosing sites. >> let me add to that a little bit. we have two things we have a huge amount of data because we have very capable orbiters orbiting mars and on the orbiters we have imageers that can see a few feet. we can see all over the surface mars and see the rover tracks. that's one tool we use. the other tool from space is one thing that brought us to gail crater was minerals that were high traited that had -- hydrateed that had water. that's a clue there might be a lake but the fun thing about mars on earth it's hard to find old rocks and the reason is earth is so active still. you see the hawaii volcanos going off and the landscape

keeps changing. a plate tonics moves continent around. on mars that stuff throws out billions of years ago. so half the surface practically is very, very old. so we can get at the ancient history of mars by landing on the surface and looking at what happened early in the history of the solar system. >> the modern landscape is a very ancient one. >> yep. >> yeah. >> so we will go to another media question and this comes over the audio line? >> thank you next question is from mike wall with -- your line is opened. >> thank you guys i appreciate your time. -- this is a question for ashwin. -- it's been a couple years on mars and so how do you think --

so, -- >> ashwin i believe the person is askinabout how we discoveries will fit in with the legacy of the mars curiosity rover and your view of that. >> yeah. it's a great question. and sometimes being involved it's so deeply in the day to day we forget to look at the bigger picture. but, you know, ace mentioned earlier -- as i mentioned earlier, the way i think about it is we have a role in the ongoing exploration of mars that's been going on for more than 50 years. and we will continue in the future as we get closer and closer -- to see if life orange nated on mars and sending humans there. and maybe even colonizing mars one day. and the role that curiosity was designed to play was to figure out if mars ever was habitable. we didn't know that before curiosity went there. we didn't know that lakes survived on mars in this time

period from 3 to 4 billion years ago. -- and we didn't know the extent organic matter was presence on -- present on mars and could be concentrate and would be preserveed for us to study. those are big questions the mission was designed to address. and you know, with these results, you just couldn't -- i couldn't be happier and how we have been able to meet objectives and provide them as material for future missions to use when they are designing where to go and how to accomplish the science. >> i think we have a little bit of time but i think there's one more question for the media we will try to sneak in. >> thank you the next question is from hillary the business i been cider. your line is opened. >> hi. thank for taking my question i want to ask about the methane is coming from. if you think that it's rising summer temperatures that are warming those up and that's how

they are seeing it? >> chris you want to talk about the possible sour for the methane levels in the summer. >> there is a class rate stable on mars that are created through the high pressure course initially. they could be a source. but we don't believe remember once you get under the surface by several meters and below that, you don't really have a seasonal cycle there. it's pretty constant temperature. so, the class rates or others may be leak or seeping the methane continuously throughout the year. it's only when the surface temperature will have the seasonal psychel that moderates the release of the methane. i that i answer your question. >> that's all the time we have if you submit a question by a social media that we didn't goat we will spend hours and days to get to as many as we can to answer online. thanks for joining us we were

live at nasa and have a great rest of the day. bye. an important issue to me in the state of utah is the use of water being a desert state. we need to really focus on how we use our water and with some of the drier winters we have had it's been rolly important to me to focus on conserving water and passing legislation that helps conserve water.

those of us down at the bottom are low. there's not a lot of jobs for me. congress doesn't seem to care about that. >> i'm a librarian here at salt lake community college library. the important issue for the state of utah is overpopulation. i feel like overpopulation is the root cause of any of our societal problems. i do not know that there are easy solutions to the problem. i feel like that is probably the most important issue facing our state. as well as our city on a global

scale. >> voices from the state, part of cspan's 50 capital tour. our stop in salt lake city utah. >> alex cesar will be on capitol hill in the morning to testify about president trumps prescription drug pricing plan. the senate health committee meets at 10 am eastern with live coverage here on cspan 3. cspan, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 cspan was created as a public service by america's cable television company. and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress. the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington d.c. and around the country. cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider.