This story was originally published by NASA and is unaltered.

(C) NASA
This story was originally published by NASA and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .

Celebrating 10 Years at Mars with NASA’s MAVEN Mission [1]

[]

Date: 2024-09

To better understand how Mars lost much of its atmosphere, MAVEN measured isotopes of argon gas in the upper Martian atmosphere. Argon is a noble gas, meaning it rarely reacts with other constituents in the Martian atmosphere. The only way it can be removed is by atmospheric sputtering — a process where ions crash into the Martian atmosphere at high enough speeds that they knock gas molecules out of the atmosphere. When the MAVEN team analyzed argon isotopes in the upper atmosphere, they were able to estimate that roughly 65% of the argon originally present had been lost through sputtering over the planet’s history.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/maven/celebrating-10-years-at-mars-with-nasas-maven-mission/

Published and (C) by NASA
Content appears here under this condition or license: Public Domain.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/nasa/