Table of Contents

MATMOS – Surveying Mars’s atmosphere for signs of life

After the Canadian-built weather station on board NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander (which found snow falling in the planet’s atmosphere), Canada will return to study the composition of the Red Planet’s atmosphere in 2016. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and NASA are working on a science instrument called MATMOS (short for “Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer”). Along with four other science instruments, MATMOS will launch to Mars on board the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The orbiter’s mission is to probe the planet’s atmosphere in search of methane and other trace atmospheric gases.

Why methane?

In March 2003, scientists from NASA and Europe discovered what appear to be quantities of methane on Mars. Methane is potentially the first clue in the search for signs of active life today on the Red Planet, since it is readily produced by microbial biological activity, such as digestion. It is for this reason that cattle are often blamed as the primary source of methane on Earth. However, methane can also be produced by geological processes, such as volcanic eruptions. Early findings show that the levels of methane on Mars apparently changes dramatically from year to year. This poses an additional mystery for scientists, since methane is believed to be a long-lived gas in the Mars atmosphere, persisting for a few hundred years. If the gas is indeed methane, what is its source, and what causes it to disappear so quickly?

Solving the Mystery: How MATMOS works

MATMOS is a highly precise spectrometer and solar imager designed not only to detect methane, but search for other gases that might provide important clues. Designed to be 100 times more sensitive than current surveys, MATMOS will also take images of Martian cloud and dust layers. The instrument will be able to detect trace gas quantities as small as a few molecules per trillion, which is equivalent to the quantity of methane in the stomachs of just three cows.

MATMOS will zero in on the Sun, looking at the components of light absorbed by gases, dust and cloud in the Mars atmosphere (also known as an atmospheric spectrum). MATMOS will produce very high resolution measurements (spectra) of infrared light that will definitively detect most gases that are present in the atmosphere in quantities above a few parts per trillion. Images from the MATMOS solar imager will provide additional information about dust and cloud layers for a more complete understanding of the atmosphere. Like its sister instrument observing the Earth on Canada’s Scisat mission, MATMOS will measure many vertical levels of the atmosphere each sunrise and sunset, providing information on the distribution as well as abundance of gases, dust and clouds.

MATMOS is a partnership between the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the CSA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Victoria Hipkin, senior planetary scientist at the CSA, is co-leading the project with Paul Wennberg of Caltech. The Canadian science team includes researchers from Dalhousie University in Halifax (Dr. James Drummond); the University of Winnipeg (Dr. Ed Cloutis); the University of Toronto (Drs. Jonathan Abbatt, Barbara Sherwood-Lollar, Kimberly Strong, and Kaley Walker) and York University (Dr. Jack McConnell).

The MATMOS instrument will build on the expertise Canada has acquired from the CSA's Scisat mission, which has been using a similar technique and technology to study ozone depletion in Earth's atmosphere since 2003. The CSA has selected ABB of Quebec City (the same company that built elements of SCISAT's hardware) to do concept design work for the Canadian elements. Canada's contribution will include the heart of the instrument: the critical subsystem of a detection instrument known as an interferometer and a solar imager, and participation in the overall instrument design, test, calibration and data production.