Is Mars the Old Earth?

Mars was once a vast land of vegetation and life.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover has been doing a lot of exploring lately, and recently stumbled upon arguably one of the most life-changing discoveries to date.

Coined the Maven mission, the rover has identified the process that appears to have played a key role in the transition of the planet’s atmosphere and climate from an early, warm, and wet environment that might have supported life, to the cold, dry, arid planet it is today.

Photo Credit: NASA.
An artist's rendering that depicts a solar storm hitting Mars and stripping ions from the upper atmosphere.

Moreover, data collected by the Maven helped to determine the rate at which Mars’ atmosphere is losing gas to space. According to scientists, gas is being stripped by solar wind storms.

“Mars appears to have had a thick atmosphere warm enough to support liquid water, which is a key ingredient and medium for life as we currently know it,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission.

“Understanding what happened to the Mars atmosphere will inform our knowledge of the dynamics and evolution of any planetary atmosphere. Learning what can cause changes to a planet’s environment from one that could host microbes at the surface to one that doesn’t is important to know.”

Ancient regions of Mars show signs of abundant water, carved out rivers, rolling valleys, and a plethora of natural resources.

Scientists were also able to estimate the planet’s life span via measuring the rate at which solar wind strips away gas from Mars.

The planet’s gas is stripped away at a rate of about 100 grams every second.

“Like the theft of a few coins from a cash register every day, the lost becomes significant over time,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado. “We’ve seen that the atmosphere erosion increases significantly during solar storms, so we think the loss rate was much higher billions of years ago when the sun was young and more active.”

Scientists also believe that a similar state could become of our planet, as Earth is continuously losing atmospheric particles similar to those that existed on Mars.

However, Earth does have a big magnetic field that shields the atmosphere from the solar wind storms, which were inevitably the downfall of Mars.