WASHINGTON: If planets had personalities, Mars would be a rock star, according to preliminary results from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft.
Mars sports a “Mohawk” of escaping atmospheric particles at its poles, “wears” a layer of metal particles high in its atmosphere, and lights up with aurora after being smacked by solar storms, researchers said.
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft was launched on November 18, 2013, to discover how the Red Planet lost much of its atmosphere, transforming its climate from one that could have supported life billions of years ago into its present cold and barren state.
Atoms in the Martian upper atmosphere become electrically charged ions after being energised by solar and space radiation, researchers said.
Because they are electrically charged, these ions feel the magnetic and electric forces of the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically conducting gas blown from the surface of the Sun into space at about a million miles per hour.
The solar wind and more violent solar activity, such as solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections, have the ability to strip away ions from Mars’ upper atmosphere through electric and magnetic forces generated by a variety of mechanisms, causing the atmosphere to become thinner over time.
