This “atmospheric escape” happens to every planet. According to MAVEN, solar wind strips away a quarter pound of Martian atmosphere every second. This magnetic field protects Earth and it’s atmosphere from the majority of the damaging particles being emitted from the Sun, and it’s a lack of such protection that has been the undoing of our planetary neighbor.
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Scientists think Mars may have been a warmer, wetter planet billions of years ago – until something catastrophic happened to its atmosphere.
Researchers also said the erosion of the Martian atmosphere “increases significantly” during solar storms.
Mars may still have enough liquid water under its surface to support bacterial life, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mars exploration lead scientist Michael Meyer said in a press conference. This means that it is vulnerable and weak to solar ultraviolet radiation as high energies from gas and magnetic particles from the sun escape into space and shatter into the atmosphere during solar winds and solar storms. In order for water to exist, Mars’ atmosphere would have needed to be much denser.
After we recently heard that there’s evidence of liquid water on Mars, NASA is planning to knock our socks off again with another big announcement tomorrow. By looking at an ICME that struck Mars in March of this year, scientists observed a greater quantity of gas ions being shot into space – something that could have happened more frequently when the solar system was younger and the sun more active. The magnetic field carried by the solar wind as it flows past Mars can generate an electric field, much as a turbine on Earth can be used to generate electricity. MAVEN reached Mars in September 2014.
NASA’s understanding of Mars continues to deepen with new data released Thursday that may explain why the Red Planet’s atmosphere is so thin, cold and desolate.
That is just the normal rate, when there is a solar storm it is even more.
Data from MAVEN, an unmanned spacecraft that has been circling Mars for the past year, was published in scientific studies, including four in the journal Science and 44 more in Geophysical Research Letters. “MAVEN also is studying other loss processes – such as loss due to impact of ions or escape of hydrogen atoms – and these will only increase the importance of atmospheric escape”.
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As climate change continues to ravage the Earth, a few people have suggested the possibility of terraforming Mars by adding carbon dioxide found in the crust to the atmosphere.
