Published 19/07/2025 20:31 | Updated 19/07/2025 20:32
Mars Lost Its Water Due to Atmospheric stripping, NASA Confirms in Landmark Revelation
in a groundbreaking revelation, NASA has pinpointed the primary cause behind Mars’s transformation from a perhaps water-rich world to the arid planet we know today. new findings indicate that a process known as cathodic spraying, driven by intense solar activity billions of years ago, systematically stripped away the Martian atmosphere, leading to the evaporation of its liquid water and the cessation of life.
For years,scientific inquiry had established that Mars once harbored water and even simple microbial life. However, the precise mechanism responsible for the planet’s desiccation remained elusive. NASA’s latest research, detailed in a recent publication, sheds definitive light on this enduring mystery.
The agency explains that early in its history, Mars lacked a protective magnetic field, leaving its atmosphere vulnerable to the onslaught of solar winds and storms. This direct exposure initiated a process where electrically charged particles from the sun collided with atmospheric gases. These collisions, described as a form of “cathodic spraying,” effectively eroded the atmosphere by ejecting neutral atoms and molecules into space.
“It’s like making a cannon ball leap in a pool,” explained Shannon Curry, lead researcher for the Maven mission at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and lead author of the study. “The cannon bullet, in this case, is the heavy ions that collide with the atmosphere very quickly and spread neutral atoms and molecules.” This atmospheric erosion rendered liquid water unstable on the Martian surface, causing it to dissipate into space.
direct Observation Validates Long-Held Theories
While scientists had previously gathered indirect evidence of this atmospheric stripping, the recent NASA findings mark the first direct observation of the phenomenon.”It’s as if we found the ashes of a fire. But we wanted to see the fire – in this case, cathodic spraying – directly,” Curry stated, highlighting the meaning of this observational breakthrough.
To achieve this direct observation, the Maven spacecraft’s team strategically deployed three instruments: a solar wind ion analyzer, a magnetometer, and a neutral gas and ion mass spectrometer. These instruments captured simultaneous measurements at crucial junctures, providing the necessary data to map the process in unprecedented detail. The research also required years of observation to gather data from both the day and night sides of Mars at low altitudes.
The combined data allowed scientists to create a novel map illustrating the distribution of argon, a noble gas, in the Martian atmosphere. This map revealed the presence of argon at high altitudes precisely where energetic particles from the solar wind were impacting the atmosphere and causing it to be sprayed into space. This provided real-time evidence of the cathodic spraying process.
Moreover, the study revealed that this atmospheric erosion is occurring at a rate four times greater than previously estimated and intensifies substantially during solar storms. The comprehensive findings of this research have been published in the journal Science Advances.
