Mars is losing its atmosphere at a rate of one quarter pound per second
In short: The Red Planet is slowly bleeding into the void. NASA's MAVEN mission has revealed that the solar wind is stripping away Martian gas at a steady, relentless pace. This atmospheric theft explains how a once-warm, wet world capable of supporting life transformed into a frozen desert.
NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has quantified the erosion of the Martian atmosphere. The solar wind—a stream of protons and electrons traveling at roughly one million miles per hour—strips away about 100 grams (roughly 1/4 pound) of gas every second. Although minor, Bruce Jakosky from the University of Colorado Boulder likens this to daily coin thefts from a till; across billions of years, such total deficits eventually alter a world's composition. The mission tracked a series of dramatic solar storms in March 2015 to confirm these findings. These results were published in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters in November 2015.
The rate of this erosion is not constant. MAVEN data shows that atmospheric loss accelerates dramatically during solar storms. Because the Sun was much younger and more active billions of years ago, scientists believe the loss rate was significantly higher in the past. The atmosphere became directly exposed to the solar wind because Mars lost its magnetic field early in its history.
This violent solar activity likely played a primary role in stripping away a thick atmosphere that was once warm enough to support liquid water, eventually leaving Mars cold and arid. Beyond simple stripping, MAVEN has directly observed a process called 'sputtering.' In this mechanism, heavy ions from the solar wind crash into the atmosphere like a cannonball into a pool, splashing neutral atoms and molecules out into space. This process explains why lighter isotopes of argon are missing from the Martian atmosphere. By understanding these mechanisms, researchers hope to better predict how planetary environments evolve and how to protect future human explorers from space weather. Scientists previously identified this escape through the study of argon isotopes in the upper atmosphere. To see the process directly, the team required simultaneous measurements from three specific instruments aboard the spacecraft. They also needed to map data across both the dayside and nightside of the planet at low altitudes.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: How Mars is losing its atmosphere on This Week @NASA – November 6, 2015
- Also: NASA Mission Reveals Speed of Solar Wind Stripping Martian Atmosphere - NASA
- Also: NASA’s MAVEN Makes First Observation of Atmospheric Sputtering at Mars - NASA Science
- Also: www.sciencedaily.com — NASA launches twin spacecraft to solve the mystery of Mars’ lost atmosphere
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