No detection of methane on Mars from early ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter observations

Oleg Korablev (1) , Ann Carine Vandaele (2) , Franck Montmessin (3) , Anna A. Fedorova (1) , Alexander Trokhimovskiy (1) , François Forget (4) , Franck Lefèvre (3) , Frank Daerden (2) , Ian R. Thomas (2) , Loic Trompet (2) , Justin T. Erwin (2) , Shohei Aoki (2) , Séverine Robert (2) , Lori Neary (2) , Sébastien Viscardy (2) , Alexey V. Grigoriev (1) , Nikolay I. Ignatiev (1) , Alexey Shakun (1) , Andrey Patrakeev (1) , Denis A. Belyaev (1) , Jean-Loup Bertaux (3, 1) , Kevin Olsen (3) , Lucio Baggio (3) , Juan Alday (5) , Yuriy S. Ivanov (6) , Bojan Ristic (2) , Jon Mason (7) , Yannick Willame (2) , Cédric Depiesse (2) , Laszlo Hetey (2) , Sophie Berkenbosch (2) , Roland Clairquin (2) , Claudio Queirolo (2) , Bram Beeckman (2) , Eddy Neefs (2) , Manish R. Patel (7) , Giancarlo Bellucci (8) , José-Juan López-Moreno (9) , Colin F. Wilson (5) , Giuseppe Etiope (10, 8, 11) , Lev Zelenyi (1) , Håkan Svedhem (12) , Jorge L. Vago (12) , Gustavo Alonso-Rodrigo (13) , Francesca Altieri (8) , Konstantin Anufreychik (1) , Gabriele E. Arnold (14) , Sophie Bauduin (15) , David Bolsée (2) , Giacomo Carrozzo (8) , R. Todd Clancy (16) , Edward A. Cloutis (17) , Matteo Crismani (18) , Fabiana da Pieve (2) , Emiliano d'Aversa (8) , Natalia Duxbury (19) , Thérèse Encrenaz (20) , Thierry Fouchet (20) , Bernd Funke (9) , Didier Fussen (2) , Maia Garcia-Comas (9) , Jean-Claude Gérard (21) , Marco Giuranna (8) , Leo Gkouvelis (21) , Francisco Gonzalez-Galindo (9) , Davide Grassi (8) , Sandrine Guerlet (4) , Paul Hartogh (22) , James A. Holmes (7) , Benoît Hubert (21) , Jacek W. Kaminski (23) , Özgür Karatekin (24) , Yasumasa Kasaba (25) , David Kass (26) , Igor Khatuntsev (1) , Armin Kleinböhl (26) , Nikita Kokonkov (1) , Vladimir Krasnopolsky (27) , Ruslan Kuzmin (1) , Gaetan Lacombe (3) , Orietta Lanciano (28) , Emmanuel Lellouch (20) , Stephen Lewis (7) , Mikhail Luginin (1) , Giuliano Liuzzi (18) , Manuel López-Puertas (9) , Miguel Lopez-Valverde (9) , Anni Määttänen (3) , Arnaud Mahieux (2) , Emmanuel Marcq (3) , Javier Martin-Torres (29) , Igor Maslov (1) , Alexander Medvedev (22) , Ehouarn Millour (4) , Boris Moshkin (1) , Michael J. Mumma (18) , Hiromu Nakagawa (25) , Robert E. Novak (18) , Fabrizio Oliva (8) , Dmitry Patsaev (1) , Arianna Piccialli (2) , Cathy Quantin-Nataf (30) , Etienne Renotte (31) , Birgit Ritter (21) , Alexander Rodin (32) , Frédéric Schmidt (33) , Nick Schneider (34) , Valery Shematovich (35) , Michael D. Smith (18) , Nicholas A. Teanby (36) , Ed Thiemann (34) , Nicolas Thomas (37) , Jean Vander Auwera (38) , Luis Vázquez (39) , Geronimo Villanueva (18) , Matthieu Vincendon (40) , James Whiteway (41) , Valérie Wilquet (2) , Michael J. Wolff (16) , Paulina Wolkenberg (8) , Roger Yelle (42) , Roland Young (4) , Ludmila Zasova (1) , Maria Paz Zorzano (43)

1 IKI - Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
2 BIRA-IASB - Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy / Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique
3 PLANETO - LATMOS
4 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
5 Department of Physics [Oxford]
6 MAO - Main Astronomical Observatory of NAS of Ukraine
7 School of Physical Sciences [Milton Keynes]
8 IAPS - Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali - INAF
9 IAA - Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
10 INGV - Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia - Sezione di Roma
11 Faculty of Environmental Science and Engineering [Cluj-Napoca]
12 ESTEC - European Space Research and Technology Centre
13 IDR - Instituto Universitario de Microgravedad "Ignacio Da Riva"
14 DLR Institut für Planetenforschung
15 Spectroscopie de l'atmosphère, Service de Chimie Quantique et Photophysique
16 SSI - Space Science Institute [Boulder]
17 Department of Geography [Winnipeg]
18 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
19 MSU - Lomonosov Moscow State University
20 LESIA (UMR_8109) - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
21 LPAP - Laboratoire de Physique Atmosphérique et Planétaire
22 MPS - Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung
23 Institute of Geophysics [Warsaw]
24 ROB - Royal Observatory of Belgium [Brussels]
25 Graduate School of Information Sciences [Sendai]
26 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
27 Institute for Astrophysics and Computational Sciences [Washington]
28 ASI - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
29 Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering [Luleå]
30 LGL-TPE - Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon - Terre, Planètes, Environnement [Lyon]
31 AMOS - Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems SA
32 MIPT - Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology [Moscow]
33 GEOPS - Géosciences Paris Sud
34 LASP - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [Boulder]
35 INASAN - Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences
36 School of Earth Sciences [Bristol]
37 University of Bern
38 ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
39 UCM - Universidad Complutense de Madrid = Complutense University of Madrid [Madrid]
40 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale
41 CRESS - Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science [Toronto]
42 LPL - Lunar and Planetary Laboratory [Tucson]
43 LUT - Luleå University of Technology

The detection of methane on Mars has been interpreted as indicating that geochemical or biotic activities could persist on Mars today1. A number of different measurements of methane show evidence of transient, locally elevated methane concentrations and seasonal variations in background methane concentrations2,3,4,5. These measurements, however, are difficult to reconcile with our current understanding of the chemistry and physics of the Martian atmosphere6,7, which—given methane’s lifetime of several centuries—predicts an even, well mixed distribution of methane1,6,8. Here we report highly sensitive measurements of the atmosphere of Mars in an attempt to detect methane, using the ACS and NOMAD instruments onboard the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter from April to August 2018. We did not detect any methane over a range of latitudes in both hemispheres, obtaining an upper limit for methane of about 0.05 parts per billion by volume, which is 10 to 100 times lower than previously reported positive detections2,4. We suggest that reconciliation between the present findings and the background methane concentrations found in the Gale crater4 would require an unknown process that can rapidly remove or sequester methane from the lower atmosphere before it spreads globally.

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

Oleg Korablev, Ann Carine Vandaele, Franck Montmessin, Anna A. Fedorova, Alexander Trokhimovskiy, et al.. No detection of methane on Mars from early ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter observations. Nature, 2019, 568, pp.517-520. ⟨10.1038/s41586-019-1096-4⟩. ⟨insu-02099757⟩