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Although Mars is a frigid and hostile world today, the Red Planet may have once been capable of hosting some form of life. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a strong magnetic field to protect it against incoming solar wind. As a result, the Sun’s stream of charged particles may have gradually stripped Mars of its atmosphere similar to how wind blows across the surface of water, according to a new study.
In a new paper published in Science Advances, researchers describe how solar wind on Mars can stir the edges of the planet’s atmosphere, creating giant, rippling waves that carry its atmospheric particles into space. The new findings provide new clues as to how Mars lost its atmosphere, and how the same process could cause other planets to evolve over time.
The Sun releases a constant outflow of charged particles in the form of solar wind, which directly interact with Mars’ atmosphere. Previous research has shown that large clouds of plasma in Mars’ upper atmosphere are the main culprit behind the bulk escape of atmospheric ions to space, but scientists have not been able to track down their origin.
“Mars is thought to have once been potentially habitable…
The depth of knowledge that we have acquired from decades of Mars exploration has put us on a path to a deeper and multifaceted understanding of Mars, both as a whole and as a complex system. Today, NASA is at the precipice of a new era of Mars exploration that will hopefully expand to a ubiquitous presence at the Red Planet and be achieved by partnerships that extend further than those that NASA has had in the past.
Countries around the world have been successfully exploring Mars alongside the U.S. for decades. July 2026 marked the 50th anniversary of Viking 1’s historic landing on Mars, which was followed by Viking 2 in September 1976. In 2028, the ESA’s (European Space Agency) long-anticipated Rosalind Franklin rover is slated to launch, following in Viking’s footsteps, by exploring the surface of Mars specifically to search for signs of life.
Concept art of the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok lander on Mars.In the next phase of Mars exploration, we expect that commercial partnerships and commercial-led missions will play an even more significant part. Contracts with commercial partners have been an important part of achieving NASA’s most ambitious missions at Mars and elsewhere, but…
The Sun continuously sends a fast stream of charged particles through space, a phenomenon known as the solar wind. Earth is largely protected from this flow by its global magnetic field, but Mars has no comparable shield. This leaves the planet's upper atmosphere exposed, allowing the solar wind to knock atmospheric particles away and carry them into space.
A new study led by Boston University and published in Science Advances suggests that this atmospheric loss can resemble wind moving across water. On Earth, wind passing over a body of water can create rolling waves and swirling vortices. At Mars, the solar wind appears to produce a similar effect by "stirring" the outer boundary of the upper atmosphere.
This interaction generates enormous boundary waves called Kelvin-Helmholtz waves.
First author Chi Zhang, a research scientist at BU's Center for Space Physics, a collaboration between BU's College of Arts & Sciences and College of Engineering, worked with colleagues to analyze data from the MAVEN and Tianwen-1 missions. Tianwen-1 measured the incoming solar wind before it reached Mars, while MAVEN tracked atmospheric ions escaping near the planet.
By combining the two sets of observations, the researchers could directly compare changing solar wind conditions with…