Another instrument will fingerprint simple organic molecules from the underground ocean. (newscientist.com)
But the enhanced instruments aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are breaching that barrier in a critical way: by detecting extremely subtle differences in wavelengths of infrared light, enough to isolate the nature and quantities of simple organic molecules. (sciencemag.org)
«We've only found simple organic molecules so far,» says Ashwin Vasavada, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who leads Curiosity's science team. (sciencenews.org)