Mars athmosphere is so puny. once the red planet had rivers, lakes, which suggests a much larger layer of insulation. And then the athmosphere just disappeard. We do not not know where it went. We always wondered if their was once life on this planet.Most scientist assumed, would have liquid water- as the life on earth does. bruce jakosty, MAVEN measurements will aim to study it's athmosphere now and extrapolate back in time, to understand what it might once have been and how it was lost.
The spacecraft have been traveling towards mars since its launch 10 months ago, in November 2013.
Mars's thin athmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, with small amounts of nitrogen, argon, oxygen and other chemicals.
Scientists have hypothesized two main routes for the bulk of the
atmosphere to have escaped: it could have seeped down through the
surface to the planet’s crust, or floated up and been lost to space. For
clues, MAVEN will watch to see when and how gas is currently stripped
off the top of the atmosphere—a process that is thought to be driven by
interactions with the solar wind.
Cometary dust and gas that strikes Mars’ atmosphere will present a
spontaneous chemistry experiment, and should yield insight into the
composition of both comet and Martian atmosphere. “The odds of having an
approach that close to Mars are about one in a million years,” Jakosky
said, “so it’s really luck that we get the opportunity here.”
Mars that we need to for humans to be able to land safely on Mars and
explore and journey around the planet.” In NASA’s eyes, every new
insight at the red planet helps enable the day it plants the first
footprints there.
Thank you
