WorldWide Drilling Resource

23 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® MAY 2013 Wyo-Ben Helps Curiosity on Mars Adapted from an Article by Jan Falstad at the Billings Gazette Earlier this year, NASA’s (National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration’s) rover Curiosity drilled into the red surface of Mars and passed a few tablespoons of rock powder to two of its onboard ana- lytical instruments. The results of the mineral tests sent scientists, including one in Billings, Montana, into a happy orbit. At a site about one-third of a mile east of where the rover landed eight months ago, Curiosity apparently found proof the ancient climate on Mars once contained clean liquid water - enough to possibly support primitive microbial life. Back in Billings, Richard Brown was thrilled about the news because his fami- ly’s business, Wyo-Ben Inc., supplied NASA with bentonite that helped cali- brate Curiosity’s instruments. “What we gave them was reference materials, so they’d knowwhat they are looking at when they got to Mars,” Brown said. Tests from the Mars sample showed X-ray diffraction patterns similar to the Wyoming bentonite. This suggests the Earth and Martian rocks contained the same clay mineral called smectite, which is the principle component of bentonite and can only be formed in water, Brown said. “It could be sea water or lake water, but is has to have some amount of salts in it or it could be hot thermal water like the water in Yellowstone National Park,” said Brown. However, the careful Brown, who has a deep interest in science, quickly added that Wyo-Ben can only take credit for playing “a tiny part” in helping NASA rec- ognize some clay minerals on Mars. The discovery suggests Mars once had enough water over an extended period perhaps three billion years ago to pos- sibly support extremophiles - life that can live in extreme environments. Curiosity isn’t equipped to test direct- ly for life; but the rover found carbon, sulfur, oxygen, and other elements pres- ent in forms that life on Earth uses, NASA said. As a kid, Brown skipped school to watch every NASAmanned space launch and dreamed of becoming an astronaut. He is Wyo-Ben’s vice president of re- sources and his brother David / is com- pany president. During the 1920s, their grandfather cobbled together several Big Horn Basin bentonite properties. In 1951, their father, Keith Brown, started Wyo-Ben in Billings and the company mines bentonite - which has hundreds of uses from women’s cosmetics to cat litter and oil and gas drilling - near Greybull, Wyoming. Richard Brown is a long-time mem- ber and past president of The Clay Minerals Society, where he met NASA scientists who later asked him for ben- tonite samples. With an undergraduate biology degree and a master’s degree in plant genetics from Arizona State, Brown is keenly interested in clay. Wyo-Ben shipped fist-sized sam- ples of bentonite to NASA when the Opportunity and Spirit rovers headed to Mars in 2003. When NASA scientists called ask- ing for more bentonite for Curiosity’s trip, they wanted loaf-size samples. “That apparently was so they could drill them and test them before trying to drill into Martian rock,” Brown said. In 2016, NASA plans on sending up another stationary probe to look for evi- dence of seismic activity, including marsquakes, on a planet where volca- noes once raged, scientists said. But the curious scientist in Billings is waiting for another seven years to pass. By 2020, a more advanced Mars rover will head to what NASA calls a rocky, cold, and sterile planet with instruments capable of detecting extremophile life. “That’s when things get really inter- esting,” Brown said. Because intense cos- mic radiation appears to have destroyed Mars’ atmosphere, scientists will likely have to dig for water. “Mars is too cold, so water has either sublimated - gone direct- ly into vapor and vanished - or it’s in the form of ice under the surface, with the exception, perhaps of the poles,” he said. If life is found on Mars and Earthlings realize they aren’t alone in the universe, Brown anticipates knowledge may shift the way humans view themselves, and perhaps relate with each other. “All the math says there’s no reasonable way to expect we are alone,” he said. When earth is closest to Mars, the planets are about 35 million miles apart. At their farthest orbit, the distance is more like 250 million miles. Sending humans to Mars would mean six months to get there, a year waiting for the planets to reach their nearest orbit again, and then a six-month return voyage. “If they were asking for volunteers, my hand would go up,” Brown said. “That would be an adventure of a lifetime.” Photo of Richard Brown by Larry Mayer/Billings Gazette.