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Researchers watched water vapor escape high into Mars’ thin atmosphere, offering tantalizing new clues as to whether the Red Planet might once have been home to life.
Traces of ancient valleys and river canals suggest that liquid water once flowed over the surface of Mars. Today, water is mostly locked in the planet’s ice caps or buried underground.
But some of it vaporizes, in the form of hydrogen escaping from the atmosphere, according to new research co-authored in the journal Science Advances by two scientists at the British Open University.
They detected the vapor by analyzing light passing through the Martian atmosphere using an instrument called Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery.
The aircraft travels aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint mission between the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos.
“This fantastic instrument gives us an unprecedented view of the isotopes of water in the atmosphere of Mars as a function of both time and place,” said Manish Patel, senior lecturer in planetary science at the Open University.
“The measurement of water isotopes is a crucial element in understanding how Mars as a planet has lost its water over time, and therefore how the habitability of the planet has changed throughout its history,” said he declared.
It has been a busy week for Martian research.
China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered orbit on Wednesday after launching from southern China last July, in the latest advance in Beijing’s ambitious space program.
The United Arab Emirates’ Hope spacecraft the day before also successfully entered Mars orbit, marking history as the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.
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