The Zhurong rover has operated on the surface of Mars for over a year since it deployed on May 22nd, 2021. Before the rover suspended operations on May 20th, 2022, due to the onset of winter and the approach of seasonal sandstorms, Zhurong managed to traverse a total distance of 1.921 km (1.194 mi). During the first kilometer of this trek, the rover obtained vital data on Mars’ extremely weak magnetic fields. According to a new study by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), these readings indicate that the magnetic field is extremely weak beneath the rover’s landing site.
Continue reading “Mars Lacks a Planet-Wide Magnetosphere, but it Does Have Pockets of Magnetism”NASA’s MAVEN Witnessed Auroras as Multiple Solar Storms Crashed into Mars
After orbiting Mars for eight long years, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft observed an extraordinary duo of auroras around the Red Planet that resulted from solar storms emanating from the Sun only a few days earlier on August 27. This observation is extraordinary since Mars lacks a global magnetic field so the solar flares must have been very powerful for MAVEN to detect them.
Continue reading “NASA’s MAVEN Witnessed Auroras as Multiple Solar Storms Crashed into Mars”A New Map Shows how Solar Winds Rain Down Everywhere on Mars
In a joint effort between NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft and the United Arab Emirates’ Emirates Mars mission (EMM), scientists have observed an uncommonly chaotic interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ upper atmosphere, creating a unique ultraviolet aurora. The phenomenon represents an unusual occurrence in Martian space weather, and scientists are excited to take advantage of future collaborations between spacecraft to keep an eye out for repeat events.
Continue reading “A New Map Shows how Solar Winds Rain Down Everywhere on Mars”40 Telescopes Watched the Sun as the Parker Solar Probe Made its Most Recent Flyby
Sometimes in space, even when you’re millions of kilometers from anything, you’re still being watched. Or at least that’s the case for the Parker Solar Probe, which completed the 11th perihelion of its 24 perihelion journey on February 25th. While the probe was speeding past the Sun, it was being watched by over 40 space and ground-based telescopes.
Continue reading “40 Telescopes Watched the Sun as the Parker Solar Probe Made its Most Recent Flyby”Dust Storms on Mars Continue to Make the Planet Drier
Despite decades of exploration and study, Mars still has its fair share of mysteries. In particular, scientists are still trying to ascertain what happened to the water that once flowed on Mars’ surface. Unfortunately, billions of years ago, the Martian atmosphere began to be stripped away by the solar wind, which also resulted in the loss of its surface water over time – although it was not entirely clear where it went and what mechanisms were involved.
To address this, a team of scientists recently consulted data obtained by three orbiter missions studying the Martian atmosphere. In the process, they found evidence that the smaller regional dust storms that happen almost annually on Mars are making the planet drier over time. These findings suggest that storms are a major driving force behind the evolution of Mars’ atmosphere and its transition to the freezing and desiccated place we know today.
Continue reading “Dust Storms on Mars Continue to Make the Planet Drier”What Could We Learn From a Mission to Phobos?
According to new research that appeared in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, the larger of Mars’ two moons (Phobos) has an orbit that takes it through a stream of charged particles (ions) that flow from the Red Planet’s atmosphere. This process has been taking place for billions of years as the planet slowly lost its atmosphere, effectively establishing a record of Martian climate change on Phobos’ surface.
This research has provided yet another incentive for landing a mission on Phobos, something that has never been done successfully. In essence, this mission could gather sample data that would allow scientists to study this record more closely. In the process, they would be able to learn a great deal more about how Mars went from being a warmer world with liquid water to the extremely arid and cold environment it is today.
Continue reading “What Could We Learn From a Mission to Phobos?”The Martian Sky Pulses in Ultraviolet Every Night
There’s a surprising phenomenon taking place in Mars’ atmosphere: during the spring and fall seasons on the Red Planet, large areas of the sky pulse in ultraviolet light, exactly three times every night.
Continue reading “The Martian Sky Pulses in Ultraviolet Every Night”Mars Doesn’t Have Much of a Magnetosphere, But Here’s a Map
Even though Earthling scientists are studying Mars intently, it’s still a mysterious place.
One of the striking things about Mars is all of the evidence, clearly visible on its surface, that it harbored liquid water. Now, all that water is gone, and in fact, liquid water couldn’t survive on the surface of the Red Planet. Not as the planet is now, anyway.
But it could harbour water in the past. What happened?
Continue reading “Mars Doesn’t Have Much of a Magnetosphere, But Here’s a Map”Carl Sagan’s Theory Of Early Mars Warming Gets New Attention
Water. It’s always about the water when it comes to sizing up a planet’s potential to support life. Mars may possess some liquid water in the form of occasional salty flows down crater walls, but most appears to be locked up in polar ice or hidden deep underground. Set a cup of the stuff out on a sunny Martian day today and depending on conditions, it could quickly freeze or simply bubble away to vapor in the planet’s ultra-thin atmosphere.
Evidence of abundant liquid water in former flooded plains and sinuous river beds can be found nearly everywhere on Mars. NASA’s Curiosity rover has found mineral deposits that only form in liquid water and pebbles rounded by an ancient stream that once burbled across the floor of Gale Crater. And therein lies the paradox. Water appears to have gushed willy-nilly across the Red Planet 3 to 4 billion years ago, so what’s up today?
Blame Mars’ wimpy atmosphere. Thicker, juicier air and the increase in atmospheric pressure that comes with it would keep the water in that cup stable. A thicker atmosphere would also seal in the heat, helping to keep the planet warm enough for liquid water to pool and flow.
Different ideas have been proposed to explain the putative thinning of the air including the loss of the planet’s magnetic field, which serves as a defense against the solar wind.
Convection currents within its molten nickel-iron core likely generated Mars’ original magnetic defenses. But sometime early in the planet’s history the currents stopped either because the core cooled or was disrupted by asteroid impacts. Without a churning core, the magnetic field withered, allowing the solar wind to strip away the atmosphere, molecule by molecule.
Solar wind eats away the Martian atmosphere
Measurements from NASA’s current MAVEN mission indicate that the solar wind strips away gas at a rate of about 100 grams (equivalent to roughly 1/4 pound) every second. “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.
Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) suggest a different, less cut-and-dried scenario. Based on their studies, early Mars may have been warmed now and again by a powerful greenhouse effect. In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers found that interactions between methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the early Martian atmosphere may have created warm periods when the planet could support liquid water on its surface.
The team first considered the effects of CO2, an obvious choice since it comprises 95% of Mars’ present day atmosphere and famously traps heat. But when you take into account that the Sun shone 30% fainter 4 billion years ago compared to today, CO2 alone couldn’t cut it.
“You can do climate calculations where you add CO2 and build up to hundreds of times the present day atmospheric pressure on Mars, and you still never get to temperatures that are even close to the melting point,” said Robin Wordsworth, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at SEAS, and first author of the paper.
Carbon dioxide isn’t the only gas capable of preventing heat from escaping into space. Methane or CH4 will do the job, too. Billions of years ago, when the planet was more geologically active, volcanoes could have tapped into deep sources of methane and released bursts of the gas into the Martian atmosphere. Similar to what happens on Saturn’s moon Titan, solar ultraviolet light would snap the molecule in two, liberating hydrogen gas in the process.
When Wordsworth and his team looked at what happens when methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide collide and then interact with sunlight, they discovered that the combination strongly absorbed heat.
Carl Sagan, American astronomer and astronomy popularizer, first speculated that hydrogen warming could have been important on early Mars back in 1977, but this is the first time scientists have been able to calculate its greenhouse effect accurately. It is also the first time that methane has been shown to be an effective greenhouse gas on early Mars.
When you take methane into consideration, Mars may have had episodes of warmth based on geological activity associated with earthquakes and volcanoes. There have been at least three volcanic epochs during the planet’s history — 3.5 billion years ago (evidenced by lunar mare-like plains), 3 billion years ago (smaller shield volcanoes) and 1 to 2 billion years ago, when giant shield volcanoes such as Olympus Mons were active. So we have three potential methane bursts that could rejigger the atmosphere to allow for a mellower Mars.
The sheer size of Olympus Mons practically shouts massive eruptions over a long period of time. During the in-between times, hydrogen, a lightweight gas, would have continued to escape into space until replenished by the next geological upheaval.
“This research shows that the warming effects of both methane and hydrogen have been underestimated by a significant amount,” said Wordsworth. “We discovered that methane and hydrogen, and their interaction with carbon dioxide, were much better at warming early Mars than had previously been believed.”
I’m tickled that Carl Sagan walked this road 40 years ago. He always held out hope for life on Mars. Several months before he died in 1996, he recorded this:
” … maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there — the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.”
MAVEN Takes This Trippy, Nightglowing Photo of Mars in UV
Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s, but there’s still a lot going on in that wispy, carbon dioxide Martian air. The MAVEN spacecraft recently took some exceptional images of Mars using its Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS), revealing dynamic and previously invisible subtleties.
MAVEN took the first-ever images of nightglow on Mars. You may have seen nightglow in images of Earth taken by astronauts on the International Space Station as a dim greenish light surrounding the planet. Nightglow is produced when oxygen and nitrogen atoms collide to form nitric oxide. This is ionized by ultraviolet light from the Sun during the day, and as it travels around to the nightside of the planet, it will glow in ultraviolet.
“The planet will glow as a result of this chemical reaction,” said Nick Schneider, from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, speaking today at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. “This is a common planetary reaction that tells us about the transport of these ingredients and around the planet and show how winds circulate at high altitudes.”
MAVEN’s images show evidence of strong irregularities in Mars’ high altitude winds and circulation patterns and Schneider said these first images will lead to an improved understanding of the circulation patterns that control the behavior of the atmosphere from approximately 37 to 62 miles (about 60 to 100 kilometers) high.
MAVEN’s ultraviolet images also provide insight into cloud formation and ozone in Mars atmosphere.
The images show how water ice clouds form, especially in the afternoon, over the four giant volcanoes on Mars in the Tharsis region. Cloud formation in the afternoon is a common occurrence on Earth, as convection causes water vapor to rise.
“Water ice clouds are very common on Mars and they can tell us about water inventory on the planet,” Schneider said. “In these images you can see an incredible expansion of the clouds over the course of seven hours, forming a cloud bank that must be a thousand miles across.”
He added that this is just the kind of info scientists want to be plugging in to their circulation models to study circulation and the chemistry of Mars’ atmosphere. “This is helping us advance our understanding in these areas, and we’ll be able to study it with MAVEN through full range of Mars’ seasons.”
Schneider explained that MAVEN’s unique orbit allows it to get views of the planet that other orbiters don’t have. One part of its elliptical orbit takes it high above the planet that allows for global views, but it still orbits fast enough to get multiple views as Mars rotates over the course of a day.
“We get to see daily events evolve over time because we return to that orbit every few hours,” he said.
In addition, dayside ultraviolet imagery from the spacecraft shows how ozone amounts change over the seasons. Ozone is destroyed when water vapor is present, so ozone accumulates in the winter polar region where the water vapor has frozen out of the atmosphere. The images show ozone lasting into spring, indicating that global winds are constraining the spread of water vapor from the rest of the planet into winter polar regions.
Wave patterns in the ozone images show wind pattern, as well, helping scientists to study the chemistry and global circulation of Mars’ atmosphere.
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