Rocket Plane Can Sniff Out Methane on Mars

According to Joel Levine of NASA's Langley Research Center, methane gas on Mars can be located with the help of an aeroplane mission called ARES. The aeroplane would not only be able to detect local concentrations of methane, but also be able to survey a path hundreds of kilometers long. The ARES plane would enter Mars' atmosphere protected by a heat shield; drift close to the surface on a parachute, then cut loose at an altitude of 1.5 km. Levine claimed that ARES would be able to identify different compounds in the atmosphere, by weighing molecules sucked into a mass spectrometer.




ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars) Photo credit: NASA