Investigating the stability of aromatic carboxylic acids in hydrated magnesium sulfate under UV irradiation to assist detection of organics on MarsShow others and affiliations
2024 (English)In: Scientific Reports, E-ISSN 2045-2322, Vol. 14, no 1, article id 15945
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument onboard the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover detected so far some of the most intense fluorescence signals in association with sulfates analyzing abraded patches of rocks at Jezero crater, Mars. To assess the plausibility of an organic origin of these signals, it is key to understand if organics can survive exposure to ambient Martian UV after exposure by the Perseverance abrasion tool and prior to analysis by SHERLOC. In this work, we investigated the stability of organo-sulfate assemblages under Martian-like UV irradiation and we observed that the spectroscopic features of phthalic and mellitic acid embedded into hydrated magnesium sulfate do not change for UV exposures corresponding to at least 48 Martian sols and, thus, should still be detectable in fluorescence when the SHERLOC analysis takes place, thanks to the photoprotective properties of magnesium sulfate. In addition, different photoproduct bands diagnostic of the parent carboxylic acid molecules could be observed. The photoprotective behavior of hydrated magnesium sulfate corroborates the hypothesis that sulfates might have played a key role in the preservation of organics on Mars, and that the fluorescence signals detected by SHERLOC in association with sulfates could potentially arise from organic compounds.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Nature Research , 2024. Vol. 14, no 1, article id 15945
Keywords [en]
aromatic carboxylic acid; carboxylic acid; magnesium sulfate; organic compound; sulfate; abrasion; article; astronomy; biological activity; controlled study; fluorescence; Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy; luminescence; nonhuman; ultraviolet irradiation; ultraviolet radiation
National Category
Physical Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-74653DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66669-8Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85198130017OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-74653DiVA, id: diva2:1888205
Note
Tis research was supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) through the ASI/INAF agreement no. 2023-3-HH, and by European Union—Next Generation EU through the PRIN MUR 2022 “Experimental and computational analog studies to support identifcation of organics on Mars by the NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance rover”. In addition, T.F. was supported by INAF through Mini Grant Ricerca Fondamentale INAF 2022. I.P., J.A. and J.M.M. acknowledge the support of the PAMMAT project funded by the Spanish Agency for Research, Contract No. PID2022-142750OB-I00. E.A.C. and D.M.A. thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Grant No. RGPIN0-2023-03413 and Canadian Space Agency Grant No. 22EXPCOI4 for supporting this project. M.B. acknowledge the COST Action CA21101 “COSY–Confned molecular systems: from a new generation of materials to the stars”. G.P. acknowledge support from Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). A. V.-R. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN)/State Agency of Research (AEI) project PID2021-126719OB-C41, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE.
2024-08-122024-08-122025-09-23Bibliographically approved