An illustration of the MAVEN spacecraft. Image courtesy NASA.
Solar wind and radiation are responsible for stripping the Martian atmosphere, transforming Mars from a planet that could have supported life billions of years ago into a frigid desert world, according to new results from NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) spacecraft led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
“We’ve determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space,” said Bruce Jakosky, LASP Prof, principal investigator for MAVEN. “The team made this determination from the latest result, which reveals that about 65% of the argon that was ever in the atmosphere has been lost to space.”
MAVEN team members had previously announced measurements showing that atmosphe...
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