A planet’s magnetic field usually protects its atmosphere from being blown away by its star. But new research suggests Mars’s weak magnetic field may have helped its atmosphere escape.
Mars
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Mapping Martian Dunes from Orbit
New research shows how fast the sands shift on the Red Planet and how useful imagery from different orbiting cameras can be in studies of Mars’s dunes.
Posted inNews
How Scientists Search for Martian Methane
Finding subsurface reserves of methane on Mars could revolutionize human space travel, but it won’t be an easy hunt.
Posted inFeatures
A Modern Manual for Marsquake Monitoring
Thanks to some extraordinary engineering, the InSight mission has led the new field of Martian seismology to the development of a new planetary magnitude scale in less than a year.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Why Is the Red Planet Red? Chlorate May Oxidize Mars’ Surface
Laboratory experiments and geochemical model suggest that chlorate is very effective to oxidize reducing iron to reddish iron oxides on Mars when liquid water was present on the surface.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Curiosity Rover Reveals Oxygen Mystery in Martian Atmosphere
An air-sampling study has captured long-term trends in the concentrations of five key atmospheric gases for the first time.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Explaining the Missing Energy in Mars’s Electrons
Electrons energized and trapped at Mars were thought to lose energy inside the planet’s magnetosheath, but new research suggests a different explanation of spacecraft data.
Posted inNews
How Do Submarine and Terrestrial Canyons Compare?
Insights from a new study could spark discoveries about Martian landscapes and also help researchers get to the bottom of canyon formation here on Earth.
Posted inNews
Microbes Spotted on Blades of Ice High in the Andes
Researchers discover microbial life on ice spires known as penitentes on the arid, sunlight-blasted upper reaches of Llullaillaco, one of the best earthly analogues for Mars.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Curiosity Monitors Rare Global Dust Storm From Mars’s Surface
Since the 1970s, no surface platform had made meteorological measurements of a global dust storm on Mars, but last summer NASA’s Curiosity rover witnessed one of these rare events.