Researchers who suggest Mars' size could explain why it lost its water are the latest team to consider how Earth's neighbor became the Red Planet.
We have known since at least 1971, when the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter captured images of dry river beds on the surface of Mars, that water once freely flowed on the Red Planet. Since then further missions have detected more dry lake beds and river basins.
The team had previously used the same method to investigate how the moon formed. They found that Mars clung to its volatiles much longer than much smaller bodies, such as the moon and the asteroid 4-Vesta. This isn't the first theory planetary scientists have developed to explain why, despite existing in the solar system's habitable zone the Martian surface is dry.
Other theories have suggested that its changing distance from the Sun could have altered the Martian climate, causing water to vaporize and rise into the atmosphere from where it was lost to space. The team suggested that dust storms that occur every summer on Mars prevent water at high altitudes from turning to ice. This then leaves those water molecules vulnerable to infrared radiation from the sun, which breaks them down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
The paper's lead author, Ph.D. candidate Eva Scheller, said in a press release from the university at the time:"Atmospheric escape doesn't fully explain the data that we have for how much water actually once existed on Mars."
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