Researchers said Wednesday they had observed water vapour escaping high up
in the thin atmosphere of Mars, offering tantalising new clues as to whether
the Red Planet could have once hosted life.
The traces of ancient valleys and river channels suggest liquid water once
flowed across the surface of Mars. Today, the water is mostly locked up in
the planet's ice caps or buried underground.
But some of it is vaporising, in the form of hydrogen leaking from the
atmosphere, according to the new research co-authored in the journal Science
Advances by two scientists at Britain's Open University.
They detected the vapour by analysing light passing through the Martian
atmosphere using an instrument called the Nadir and Occultation for Mars
Discovery.
The device is travelling aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint
mission between the European Space Agency and Russia's Roscosmos.
"This fantastic instrument is giving us a never-before-seen view of water
isotopes in the atmosphere of Mars as a function of both time and location,"
Manish Patel, senior lecturer in planetary sciences at the Open University,
said.
"Measuring water isotopes is a crucial element of understanding how Mars as
a planet has lost its water over time, and therefore how the habitability of
the planet has changed throughout its history," he said.
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| The graphic is simplified to show very broadly one possible way that hydrogen chloride is generated; there are likely additional pathways for the chemical reactions that could also be at play, perhaps with other trace gases that ExoMars hasn’t discovered yet. Credit: (C) ESA |
It has been a busy week for Martian research.
On Wednesday, the Chinese Tianwen-1 probe entered the planet's orbit after
launching from southern China last July, in the latest advance for Beijing's
ambitious space programme.
The day before, the United Arab Emirates' "Hope" probe also successfully
entered Mars' orbit, making history as the Arab world's first interplanetary
mission.
Reference:
Oleg Korablev et al. Transient HCl in the atmosphere of Mars, Science
Advances (2021). DOI:
10.1126/sciadv.abe4386
Tags:
Space & Astrophysics