The Solar Wind at Mars
That's a puzzle to planetary scientists, because Mars's surface is littered with signs of liquid water. Dried up valley networks, sedimentary deposits, and chaotic flood plains hint that billions of years ago Martian water flowed freely and that the atmosphere there must have been substantially thicker than it is now. But where did it all that Martian air go?
New evidence from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet's atmosphere was simply blown away -- by the solar wind.
Right, above: Earth is shielded from the solar wind by a magnetic bubble extending 50,000 km into space -- our planet's magnetosphere. Right, below: Without a substantial magnetosphere to protect it, much of Mars's atmosphere is exposed directly to fast-moving particles from the Sun. [more]
The solar wind is a fast-moving part of the Sun's outer atmosphere. The solar corona, with a temperature greater than one million degrees C, is so hot that the Sun's gravity can't hold it down. It flows away in all directions traveling 400 to 800 km/s. Every planet in the solar system is immersed in this gusty breeze of charged particles.
Here on Earth we're protected from the solar wind by a global magnetic field (the same one that causes compass needles to point north). Our planet's magnetosphere, which extends far out into space, deflects solar wind ions before they penetrate to the atmosphere below.
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"In 1989 the Soviet Phobos probe made direct measurements of the atmospheric erosion," he continued. When the spacecraft passed through the solar wind wake behind Mars, onboard instruments detected ions that had been stripped from Mars's atmosphere and were flowing downstream with the solar wind. "If we extrapolate those Phobos measurements 4 billion years backwards in time, solar wind erosion can account for most of the planet's lost atmosphere."
"To calculate the total loss of atmosphere," he added, "we must take into account how the Sun has changed during the past four billion years. The Sun's ultraviolet output was larger in the past, and the solar wind was probably much stronger. This means that solar wind erosion was likely much more effective in the past than it is today."
Although Mars no longer has a substantial magnetosphere, scientists think it once did and that the remnants of it still exist. In 1998 magnetometers on MGS discovered a network of magnetic loops arrayed across Mars's southern hemisphere. Locally, the magnetic fields arch over the surface like umbrellas, hundreds of km high. "If you were standing on Mars in one of these areas," says Mitchell, "you would measure a magnetic field about as strong as Earth's -- a few tenths of a gauss." Elsewhere on the planet the magnetic field is 100 to 1000 times weaker.
Above: A map of the vertical (radial) component of magnetic fields poking out of the Martian crust. Red and blue areas are zones where stronger-than-average magnetic fields protect the planet from solar wind erosion.
Indeed, it appears that Mars's magnetic umbrellas act like miniature magnetospheres. They ward off the solar wind in their vicinity and harbor pockets of gas ionized by solar UV radiation that would otherwise be blown away.
At a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Mitchell and colleagues unveiled the first-ever global map of the Red Planet's ionosphere (the ionized part of the atmosphere), based on data from the Mars Global Surveyor electron reflectometer. "The ionosphere nicely traces the distribution of the surface magnetic field, and there seems to be a 1-to-1 correspondence," noted Mitchell. Places where magnetic umbrellas deflect the solar wind are also spots where the ionosphere is retained high above the surface of the planet.
Mitchell cautions that beneath these magnetic umbrellas the neutral atmosphere at Martian "sea level" isn't particularly dense -- they are not oases of air for future colonists! Rather, the mini-magnetospheres are simply places where high-altitude atmospheric losses are relatively low. Most of Mars is still subjected to the full force of the solar wind. To retain a thick atmosphere, a planet-wide magnetic field would be needed.
Above: A map of the ionosphere on Mars. Colors represent the probability that Mars Global Surveyor will be in the ionosphere when orbiting at 400 kilometer's altitude. Blue is a low probability, meaning the spacecraft is usually in the solar wind and the ionosphere is below the spacecraft. Yellow and red show where the ionosphere often protrudes above 400 kilometers altitude. (Credit: David Mitchell, UC Berkeley.)
Earth's global magnetic field comes from an active dynamo -- that is, circulating currents at the planet's liquid metallic core. A similar dynamo once churned inside Mars, but for reasons unknown it stopped working four billion years ago. The patchwork fields we see now are remnants of that original magnetic field.
How do scientists know when the dynamo turned off? "Mars has been kind to us," explains Mitchell. "There are two large impact basins, Hellas and Argyre, about four billion years old that are demagnetized. If the dynamo was still operating when those impact features formed, the crust would have re-magnetized as they cooled. The dynamo must have stopped before then."
The advantages might be even bigger than amateur radio, though. Planetary magnetic fields could be an essential ingredient for life-bearing worlds circling stars with strong solar winds, worlds that need to retain a substantial atmosphere and liquid water. Indeed, if the Martian dynamo hadn't shut down billions of years ago, the Red Planet might be teeming with Martians today. Instead Mars is a frigid desert, apparently as barren of life as it is of its long-gone magnetic personality!
Sedimentary Mars -- Science@NASA article: New Mars Global Surveyor images reveal sedimentary rock layers on the Red Planet that may have formed underwater in the distant martian past.
The Case of the Missing Mars Water -- Science@NASA article: Plenty of clues suggest that liquid water once flowed on Mars --raising hopes that life could have arisen there-- but the evidence remains inconclusive and sometimes contradictory.
Mars Exploration Program -- from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
Malin Space Science Systems -- the company operating the Mars Orbiter Camera, which took the high-resolution images that revealed the sedimentary regions on Mars
Beagle 2 -- home page
Mars Exploration Rovers -- information from Cornell University on the pair of Mars rovers that NASA plans to launch in 2003
Twin Rovers Headed for Mars -- Science@NASA article: NASA announced plans to launch two large scientific rovers to the red planet in 2003.
Cross-bedding, Bedforms, and Paleocurrents -- an introductory document on methods for interpreting the sedimentary structures mentioned in this article, presented by the U.S. Geological Survey
Movies of computer-simulated sediment deposition -- presented by the U.S. Geological Survey
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| For lesson plans and educational activities related to breaking science news, please visit Thursday's Classroom | Author: Dr. Tony Phillips Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips Curator: Bryan Walls Media Relations: Steve Roy Responsible NASA official: Ron Koczor |
