NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has revealed that the warm atmosphere of Mars has lost due to blowing solar winds in recent in NASA's press release.
"MAVEN's" data has confirmed that the Red planet is losing its gases into the space at a rate of about 100 grams (equivalent to roughly 1/4 pound) every second due to collision with stormy solar winds, which are stream of particles, mainly protons and electrons, flowing from the sun's atmosphere at a speed of about one million miles per hour.
John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington said that learnings from such reports help in understanding the dynamics and evolution of any planetary atmosphere.
"MAVEN", NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched into space in November 2013, with the intention of understanding where the water and CO2 in Mars's early atmosphere went, has found that solar storms hit the atmosphere of Mars around March 2015 and since then the red planet has started losing its warm atmosphere to space at an accelerated speed. Also, the results indicated that Mars is losing its 75 percent warm climate from its "tail" region, where the solar wind flows behind Mars and rest 25 percent from the plume region, above the Martian poles. The report claims that present Mars climate is too cold to support a huge amount of liquid water on the planet's surface. "MAVEN's" instruments also recorded occasional ultraviolet auroras glowing in the atmosphere which lasted several days in December 2014 and also sometime between February and March.
Joe Grebowsky, "MAVEN" project scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland said," Solar-wind erosion is an important mechanism for atmospheric loss, and was important enough to account for significant change in the Martian climate", quoted Voice of America.
He also said that apart from studying solar-wind effect on the Martian climate, "MAVEN" is also studying loss due to impact of ions or escape of hydrogen atoms from the red planet.
