The Huffington Post, which is never quite so happy as when it’s
hyperventilating, went big with a story today about a pending
December announcement from the Curiosity Mars rover’s science
team. “This data is gonna be one for the history books,” HuffPo
accurately quoted Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger of
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), telling NPR. “It’s looking
really good.” Hard to overplay a teaser quote like that from one
of NASA’s usually reserved scientists, and on the surface it
does sound potentially huge. What Grotzinger was talking about
was a possible finding made by the rover’s Sample Analysis at
Mars (SAM) instrument, which is essentially a tiny onboard
laboratory in which samples of soil and air are broken down for
their constituent chemicals. One of the first things Curiosity
is looking for in these early stages of the mission — and will
continue looking for throughout — is methane, a powerful marker
of biology on Earth and likely on Mars too, assuming life exists
there. But as NP