In their major announcement reveal in a live press conference on Thursday, NASA has revealed the details on their findings thanks to the MAVEN spacecraft.
The planets atmosphere, which originally made Mars a much warmer, wetter place about 4.2 billion years ago, was stripped away by massive bursts of gas and magnetism from our Sun.
Thanks to the data collected by Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), researchers were able to comb through the data, and made the discovery by observing the ions escaping the planet at a much faster rate during coronal mass ejections, something that would have occurred in the distant past also.
Researchers also made discoveries on the cause of Mars’ mysterious aura.
The spectacular aura on Mars is believed to be caused by the Martian crust, rather than the poles like on Earth.
To add to the huge haul of discoveries, it is also now believed that particles of dust in the atmosphere of Mars is possibly from other planets, rather than from the surface as once thought.
“This is a recognition that the Mars environment is a very complex one,” said Maven principle investigator Bruce Jakosky. “We think there’s an awful lot still to learn.”
