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Martian water could disappear faster than expected
by Staff Writers
Paris, France (SPX) Jan 09, 2020

When the sun lights up the large reservoirs of ice at the poles, water vapor is released into the atmosphere. These water molecules are then transported by winds toward higher and colder altitudes where, in the presence of dust particles, they can condense into clouds and prevent a rapid and mass progression of water toward higher altitudes (as on Earth). On Mars condensation is often hindered. The atmosphere is thus regularly supersaturated in water vapor, which allows even more water to reach the upper atmosphere, where the sun's UV rays disassociate them into atoms. The discovery of the increased presence of water vapor at very high altitude entails that a greater number of hydrogen and oxygen atoms are able to escape from Mars, amplifying the loss of Martian water over the long term.

The small red planet is losing water more quickly than what theory as well as past observations would suggest.

The gradual disappearance of water (H2O) occurs in the upper atmosphere of Mars: sunlight and chemistry disassociate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms that the weak gravity of Mars cannot prevent from escaping into space.

An international research team,1 led partly by CNRS researcher Franck Montmessin, has just revealed that water vapour is accumulating in large quantities and unexpected proportions at an altitude of over 80 km in the Martian atmosphere.

Measurements showed that large atmospheric pockets are even in a state of supersaturation, with the atmosphere containing 10 to 100 times more water vapour than its temperature should theoretically allow.

With the observed supersaturation rates, the capacity of water to escape would greatly increase during certain seasons.

These results, which were published in Science on 9 January 2020, were obtained thanks to the Trace Gas Orbiter probe from the ExoMars mission, financed by the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Research paper


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MARSDAILY
Developing a technique to study past Martian climate
Houston TX (SPX) Dec 18, 2019
Joanna Clark has been interested in geology ever since she was a child. Today, the University of Houston doctoral student is turning that curiosity into a career and getting noticed by NASA, which awarded her a $285,000 grant to develop a technique that could one day be used to better understand past climate conditions on Mars. "We hope to have samples from Mars one day and when we do, we need to be ready to evaluate them. This could help give us a better understanding of how the planet has change ... read more

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