The mystery was solved by the space administration’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is seeing an end to its mission on November 16.
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The findings provide hints into the early evolution of Mars and may answer why the once ocean-laden planet is now a desolate void. These solar winds continue to chip away at Mars’ atmosphere, piece by piece, but most of the damage was done hundreds of billions of years ago, when the sun was still in its rebellious teen phase and its winds were much stronger. The issue includes four studies conducted by the spacecraft, which has been circling Mars and studying its atmosphere for the past year.
Studies suggest the planet’s thin atmosphere has elements that could support the building blocks of life, but the molecules are swept away by the solar winds because, unlike Earth, Mars lacks a global magnetic field that acts as a radiation shield, said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA.
Luckily, the NASA scientists explain during a press conference, Earth’s atmosphere is protected from major atmospheric loss by our magnetic field.
Scientists are doing preliminary research about Mars to determine if Earth-like conditions ever gave rise to a second origin of life in the Universe.
With each swing around Mars, MAVEN actually dips into the planet’s atmosphere, gathering data. NASA confirms today what caused the planet’s atmosphere to escape, leaving it vulnerable to radiation that transformed it into the cold dry world we have been exploring for half a century. Now, researchers-including those at the University of Iowa-have learned more about what happened to the climate on Mars since it was a warm and watery planet billions of years ago. This wind carries magnetic fields and when these hit the planet they generate electric fields that are then able to accelerate atmospheric ions, hurling them either directly off into space or slamming them into other atmospheric constituents so that they are removed.
Video NASA thinks it now understands why Mars has lost so much of its atmosphere: the Sun stripped it virtually clean. “Learning what can cause changes to a planet’s environment from one that could host microbes at the surface to one that doesn’t is important to know, and is a key question that is being addressed in NASA’s journey to Mars”, he added.
Auroras happen when high-speed, electrically charged particles from the sun slam into a planet’s atmosphere.
This greater grasp of planetary behavior directly impacts our understanding of what happens here on Earth, Brain said. Fortunately, there’s something significant standing in the way: Earth’s magnetic field.
“We designed STATIC to be sensitive enough to measure ions escaping from Mars over a wide range of masses, energies and fluxes”, said UC Berkeley’s.
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“This implies that not only is Mars’ atmosphere escaping today and has been escaping over time, but much of that atmosphere may have been lost early on”.
