MAVEN images reveal solar wind stripping away Martian atmosphere
OCT 15, 2014
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028341
Nature : NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft entered Martian orbit in September and began taking pictures of the planet using a UV spectrograph. Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado Boulder and his team have released the first of those images, which reveal that the solar wind is stripping hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms from Mars’s atmosphere. The carbon and oxygen atoms stay relatively close to the planet, but the hydrogen atoms, being much lighter, are sprayed into space. The images provide some direct evidence about the process that has slowly eroded the Martian atmosphere over billions of years.
© 2014 American Institute of Physics
