NASA on Thursday announced its recent findings about Mars, revealing that the destruction of the planet's atmosphere was caused by massive bursts of gas and magnetism from the Sun.
Scientists suggest that a long time ago, Mars was a warmer and wetter planet and was potentially habitable. It once had water that streams through lakes, rivers and oceans and that the planet was once protected by a thick atmosphere.
But according to NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution or MAVEN spacecraft, the Red Planet's atmosphere was destructed by the Sun's huge solar storm. And eventually, the planet dried out and became much colder, aborting any life that exists in it.
Lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarter Michael Meyer said, "Quoting Bob Dylan: 'The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."
In a report by The Independent, is said that the MAVEN spacecraft has discovered that ions were escaping Mars at a very rapid rate during solar bursts. And in an event they observed, they saw huge magnetic rotations flying out into space. These escaping ions, caused by the solar winds coming form the Sun, effected the thinning of Mars' atmosphere and the planet's distorted landscapes.
In other words, the solar wind is responsible why gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide are stripped from Mars. And when the air disappeared, liquid water also disappeared.
"What this tells us is loss through space has been an important process," Bruce M. Kakosky (via The New York Times), a scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado and MAVEN's principal investigator, said.
Another finding that shocked scientists at NASA is the presence of ultraviolet auroras in the Martian Atmosphere. According to CNN, auroras are formed "when charged particles from the solar winds enter Earth's magnetic field and travel to the poles where the particles collide with atoms of gas in the atmosphere."
And since Mars do not have a magnetic field, scientists speculate that the auroras are caused by a magnetic field in an ancient crust in Mars.
MAVEN's findings are keys to understanding future habitability in Mars.
