NASA reveals that strong solar storms ended the Martian atmosphere – Herald Tribune

  Washington. EFE

 

Strong solar storms that hit Mars were the cause of the loss of its atmosphere , which forced the disappearance of water and habitable climate of the Red Planet , revealed NASA scientists.

 

 

 “We looked and found water, but if you look at Mars today is a cold, dry, desert planet,” he said at a press conference Michael Meyer, head of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA. At present, the surface of Mars is less than 60 degrees below zero average temperature, but at the poles in winter can reach 125 degrees Celsius less.

 

 The new findings of Volatile Evolution Mission and Atmospheric Mars (Maven) spacecraft suggests that Mars undergoes the bombardment of solar particles that erode the upper atmosphere at a rate of about ten pounds (4.5 kilos) per second , a factor which is between 10 and 20 times more than usual.

 

 The current Martian atmosphere has only 1% of the density of Earth.

 

 “What this tells us is that the loss through space has been an important process,” said Bruce M. Jakosky scientist Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado and principal investigator of the mission Maven wheel press.

 

 Jakosky compared the process of solar wind that whips Mars to what happens to a person when out of the shower to the breeze and this will removes water from the hair.

 

 “I think that this is the first hard evidence that the exhaust gases into space was the main actor of climate change suffered by Mars in the past,” he said.

 

 One of the objectives of more than 125 researchers who are part of NASA’s mission is figuring out which gases and how much of them escaped into space from the Martian atmosphere and when that happened.

 

 According to NASA scientists, billions of years ago, in the beginning, the sun was much more active and unstable and caused numerous solar storms may be the reason Mars, much more exposed than the Earth to these phenomena happen to be a hot and humid place and the cold desert planet now.

 

 The Earth has a magnetic field that protects these solar storms, while Mars has no such protection.

 Maven also recorded the ultraviolet lights in the atmosphere of Mars. Maven spacecraft was launched on November 18, 2013.

 

 The key

 Data from the probe Maven try to supplement those provided by the rover Curiosity, which carries on the planet since 2012, and reveal that Mount Sharp on Mars, located inside the crater Gale, could be formed by sediments deposited in the lakebed million years ago.