![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The high levels of perchlorate found on Mars would be toxic to humans, Smith said. In fact, when there's too much perchlorate in drinking water, microbes are used to clean it up, he said.įurthermore, seasonal flow features seen on Mars may be caused by high concentrations of the brines of perchlorate, which has a strong attraction to water and can drastically lower its freezing point, Smith told. They actually live off highly oxidized chlorine, and in reducing the chlorine down to chloride, they use the energy in that transaction to power themselves. Smith said microbes on Earth use perchlorate for an energy source. "Perchlorate has become an important component of the soil … and half a percent is a fair amount," he said. "Perchlorate is not a common word in the English language all of us had to go and look it up," Smith said during Spacefest V, a conference held May 24-27 in Tucson, Ariz. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)įinding calcium perchlorate "was one of our most unexpected results," said Peter Smith, the Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The life-detection landers may have measured signatures of perchlorates, in the form of chlorinated hydrocarbons. mission to land spacecraft successfully on the surface of Mars. NASA's Viking project found a place in history when in 1976 it became the first U.S. ![]()
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