Science

sl8

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5. Hubble Helps Solve The Mystery of Mars' Escaping Water (NASA video)

Reply to electric_blue68 (Original post)

Thu May 15, 2025, 07:27 PM

May 15

Last edited Thu May 15, 2025, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)

Hubble Helps Solve The Mystery of Mars’ Escaping Water

NASA Goddard
Sep 5 2024

Mars was once a very wet planet. Scientists know that over the last 3 billion years, some of the water went underground, but what happened to the rest?

Now, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission are helping unlock that mystery. To understand how much water there was and what happened to it, scientists need to understand how the atoms escape into space.

A team combined data from Hubble and MAVEN to measure the current rate of these atoms escaping into space. This information allowed them to extrapolate the escape rate backwards through time to understand the history of water on the Red Planet.

For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Morris: Lead Producer
Dan Gallagher: Producer for Assorted Mars Animations

Music Credit:
"Cosmic Overture" by Sergey Azbel [BMI] via Nova Production Music Ltd [PRS], and Universal Production Music.

[...]

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electric_blue68 Bernardo de La Paz

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Hmm...Anyone with enough chemistry kmowledge to guess why some scientists think Mars water broke down into.... [View all] electric_blue68 May 15 OP

It doesn't really need that type of very strong reaction (splitting H2O) to cause water to disappear erronis May 15 #1

Mars is smaller, has substantially less gravity, hence the escape velocity for molecules is much smaller Bernardo de La Paz May 15 #2

The Only Thing I Can Think Of... ProfessorGAC May 15 #3

On earth, hydrolysis creates oxygen and hydrogen by applying an electrical charge through water. John1956PA May 15 #4

In our JHS Science Class we had a Hydrolysist machine! electric_blue68 May 15 #8

Did the teacher allow you to transfer some of the gases to test tubes? John1956PA May 15 #10

Interesting! No, we didn't do that. It was very cool to have that demonstration. electric_blue68 May 15 #11

Hubble Helps Solve The Mystery of Mars' Escaping Water (NASA video) sl8 May 15 #5

Thing is, scenarios based on a thin atmosphere don't explain how it got thin in the first place; except Bernardo de La Paz May 15 #6

I would expect... Chemical Bill May 15 #7

Thanks, everyone! 👍 🔭 ⚗️ electric_blue68 May 15 #9

Short-wavelength UV, particularly before there was enough O2 to form an ozone shield, is all that's needed. eppur_se_muova May 16 #12