Where Did All Of Mars’ Water Go? NASA Finally Has An Answer!
The theory that Mars harbored vast oceans is a relatively new one, but a supported one nevertheless. This inevitably brought about the question: where did all that water go? NASA might finally have an answer.
All thanks to new data from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, We’ve determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space,” Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator of the MAVEN mission, explains.
The researchers were able to make this determination based on the amount of argon, a noble gas, remains in the Martian atmosphere as compared with the levels that are believed to have once existed there. Atmospheric molecules are thought to have been slowly stripped away over time due to a process known as “sputtering” in which radiation and solar wind from the sun bump, knock, and drag them away from the planet.
That lost gas — somewhere in the neighborhood of 65% — greatly depleted the planet’s atmosphere, causing oceans, lakes, and rivers to dry up as the vital elements were swept away into space by intense radiation and solar wind.
If life did indeed exist on the surface of Mars at one time, NASA believes that the slowly depleting atmosphere — and the frigid temperatures in brought with it — would have gradually driven it to live primarily underground or in smaller habitable pockets tucked away around the planet. Let’s see what else they unearth in the future.
The theory that Mars harbored vast oceans is a relatively new one, but a supported one nevertheless. This inevitably brought about the question: where did all that water go? NASA might finally have an answer.
All thanks to new data from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, We’ve determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space,” Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator of the MAVEN mission, explains.
The researchers were able to make this determination based on the amount of argon, a noble gas, remains in the Martian atmosphere as compared with the levels that are believed to have once existed there. Atmospheric molecules are thought to have been slowly stripped away over time due to a process known as “sputtering” in which radiation and solar wind from the sun bump, knock, and drag them away from the planet.
That lost gas — somewhere in the neighborhood of 65% — greatly depleted the planet’s atmosphere, causing oceans, lakes, and rivers to dry up as the vital elements were swept away into space by intense radiation and solar wind.
If life did indeed exist on the surface of Mars at one time, NASA believes that the slowly depleting atmosphere — and the frigid temperatures in brought with it — would have gradually driven it to live primarily underground or in smaller habitable pockets tucked away around the planet. Let’s see what else they unearth in the future.
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