Present-day thermal and water activity environment of the Mars Sample Return collection

Maria-Paz Zorzano; Germán Martínez; Jouni Polkko; Leslie K Tamppari; Claire Newman; Hannu Savijärvi; Yulia Goreva; Daniel Viúdez-Moreiras; Tanguy Bertrand; Michael Smith; Elisabeth M Hausrath; Sandra Siljeström; Kathleen Benison; Tanja Bosak; Andrew D Czaja; Vinciane Debaille; Christopher D K Herd; Lisa Mayhew; Mark A Sephton; David Shuster; Justin I Simon; Benjamin Weiss; Nicolas Randazzo; Lucia Mandon; Adrian Brown; Michael H Hecht; Jesús Martínez-Frías

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-57458-4

Present-day thermal and water activity environment of the Mars Sample Return collection

Sci Rep. 2024 Mar 26;14(1):7175. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-57458-4.

Authors

Maria-Paz Zorzano¹, Germán Martínez^{2

3}, Jouni Polkko⁴, Leslie K Tamppari⁵, Claire Newman⁶, Hannu Savijärvi⁷, Yulia Goreva⁵, Daniel Viúdez-Moreiras⁸, Tanguy Bertrand⁹, Michael Smith¹⁰, Elisabeth M Hausrath¹¹, Sandra Siljeström¹², Kathleen Benison¹³, Tanja Bosak¹⁴, Andrew D Czaja¹⁵, Vinciane Debaille¹⁶, Christopher D K Herd¹⁷, Lisa Mayhew¹⁸, Mark A Sephton¹⁹, David Shuster²⁰, Justin I Simon²¹, Benjamin Weiss¹⁴, Nicolas Randazzo¹⁷, Lucia Mandon²², Adrian Brown²³, Michael H Hecht²⁴, Jesús Martínez-Frías²⁵

Affiliations

¹ Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, 28850, Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain. zorzanomm@cab.inta-csic.es.
² Lunar and Planetary Institute, Universities Space Research Association, Houston, TX, USA.
³ University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
⁴ Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland.
⁵ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA, 91109, USA.
⁶ Aeolis Research, Chandler, AZ, USA.
⁷ University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁸ Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, 28850, Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain.
⁹ Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA), Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne, France.
¹⁰ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
¹¹ Department of Geoscience, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA.
¹² RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden.
¹³ West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Geosciences, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
¹⁶ Laboratoire G-Time, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
¹⁷ Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
¹⁸ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK.
²⁰ University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
²¹ Center for Isotope Cosmochemistry and Geochronology, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA.
²² Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
²³ Plancius Research, Severna Park, MD, USA.
²⁴ MIT Haystack Observatory, Westford, MA, 01886, USA.
²⁵ Instituto de Geociencias (CSIC-UCM, Madrid, Spain.

Abstract

The Mars Sample Return mission intends to retrieve a sealed collection of rocks, regolith, and atmosphere sampled from Jezero Crater, Mars, by the NASA Perseverance rover mission. For all life-related research, it is necessary to evaluate water availability in the samples and on Mars. Within the first Martian year, Perseverance has acquired an estimated total mass of 355 g of rocks and regolith, and 38 μmoles of Martian atmospheric gas. Using in-situ observations acquired by the Perseverance rover, we show that the present-day environmental conditions at Jezero allow for the hydration of sulfates, chlorides, and perchlorates and the occasional formation of frost as well as a diurnal atmospheric-surface water exchange of 0.5-10 g water per m² (assuming a well-mixed atmosphere). At night, when the temperature drops below 190 K, the surface water activity can exceed 0.5, the lowest limit for cell reproduction. During the day, when the temperature is above the cell replication limit of 245 K, water activity is less than 0.02. The environmental conditions at the surface of Jezero Crater, where these samples were acquired, are incompatible with the cell replication limits currently known on Earth.

Keywords: Environment; Habitability; Jezero; Mars sample return; Temperature; Water activity.

Abstract

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