Using information from the NASA spacecraft, scientists found out that solar winds are causing atoms in Mars’ atmosphere to split, particularly on the side of the planet facing the sun, thus thinning the planet’s atmosphere.
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On Thursday, scientists reported that even today, the solar wind [Artists rendering; Credits: NASA/GSFC] is stripping away about 100 grams of atmospheric gas every second.
“Mars appears to have had a thick atmosphere warm enough to support liquid water which is a key ingredient and medium for life as we now know it”, says John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. “Like the theft of a few coins from a cash register every day, the loss becomes significant over time”, said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado, Boulder. With only remnants left of the ancient magnetic field that once shielded the planet from solar winds, it is battered by solar blasts that create aurora lights across the planet. NASA says that since storms were more common in the past, it was a major factor in the loss of the Martian atmosphere.
The Maven has also discovered auroras on Mars that are similar to Earth’s northern lights.
“We sort of did this dope slap, saying, “Well, of course, what’s going to prevent these particles from the sun from slamming into Mars” atmosphere anywhere and maybe everywhere?'” “We’re beginning to understand what drives climate change on Mars, and to try to generalize to planets more generally”. Data from MAVEN helped show what happened during a large solar storm in March, and indicated that this loss “increases dramatically during a solar storm event, when a coronal mass ejection hits Mars”, Jakosky said.
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sunday. The Maven instruments also measured evenly distributed dusty grains in the Martian upper atmosphere which scientists concluded must have been interplanetary space and not the surface of Mars or its moon. It is especially unprotected on its poles, where the solar winds flow in a “polar plume”, and from a “tail” of solar winds that flow behind the Red Planet. For the first time, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed this process in action – by measuring the speed and direction of ions escaping from Mars. Just over a month ago, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed evidence of salt water trickling down Martian slopes, at least in the summer. “We see an environment that was much more able to support liquid water”.
Joe Grebowsky is MAVEN project scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
NASA revealed at a press conference that the sun robbed Mars of its water and once-thick atmosphere. However, this recent data and research shows that the planet slowly lost its atmosphere to extreme solar activity.
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The scientific results from the mission appear in the November 5, 2015 issues of the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters.
