New NASA Discovery: Mars Atmosphere Leveled By Solar Wind

Scientists have discovered a solar storm eroding the atmosphere of Mars, helping to explain how it turned from an Earth-like planet into the cold, dry, desert environment we see today, new research has found.

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft began orbiting Mars for the objective of examining its atmosphere in unprecedented detail.

Grunsfeld told media that the most question to know is NASA’s MAVEN mission’s journey to Mars rather than how microbes generate at the surface of the planet.

“The theory is Mars has lost 99% of its atmosphere over many billions of years and maybe an ocean along with it”, said University of Colorado astrophysicist Nick Schneider, who led the investigation into the Mars’ auroras. “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”.

The bulk of the stripping of the atmosphere appears to be occurring in three particular regions: down the ‘tail, ‘ where the solar wind flows behind Mars, above the Martian poles in a ‘polar plume, ‘ and from an extended cloud of gas surrounding Mars. The emphasis here should really be on the term “slowly” because as MAVEN’s principal investigator, Bruce Jakosky reveals, this is a process that has unfolded over a huge length of time.

That may have short-circuited the best chance for Mars to develop life, NASA officials say. This loss was greater in March 2015, when a series of solar storms-huge ejections of charged particles from increased solar activity-barraged the planet. The answer, it seems, has to do with the solar wind, which NASA informs us is a “stream of particles, mainly protons and electrons, flowing from the sun’s atmosphere at a speed of about one million miles per hour”.

But then the Martian atmosphere changed dramatically. Our planet is losing atmosphere, but our magnetic field largely protects us from the solar winds.

An Earth-like atmosphere on Mars was once violently stripped away by solar wind, according to new findings from NASA’s ongoing exploration of the red planet.

The Earth is generally protected from solar flares by its magnetic field. In fact, scientists are now quite certain that the planet was once warm and wet. However, about 3.7 billion years ago, something happened that caused Mars to drastically cool and lose almost all of its protection from the magnetic field.