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NASA’s MAVEN Makes First Observation of Atmospheric Sputtering at Mars
After a decade of searching, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere Volatile Evolution) mission has, for the first time, reported a direct observation of an elusive
“It’s like doing a cannonball in a pool,” said Shannon Curry, principal investigator of MAVEN at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead author of the study. The direct observation of sputtering confirms that the process was a primary source of atmospheric loss in Mars’ early history when the Sun’s activity was much stronger. The finding, published this week in Science Advances, is critical to scientists’ understanding of the conditions that allowed liquid water to exist on the Martian surface, and the implications that it has for habitability billions of years ago.
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