Skip to main content

Mars is losing water due to heat and dust storms, NASA finds

Scientists know that Mars once had oceans of liquid water on its surface, and billions of years ago it may even have looked like Earth. But over time, this water was lost into space, leaving the planet in the arid state we see it today. Just how this happened in an ongoing mystery for scientists to investigate, and now new evidence suggests that the planet’s heat and dust play a key role in launching water into space.

Researchers used data from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN or MAVEN spacecraft, a Mars orbiter that collects data on the upper atmosphere. They found that Mars is still losing water as vapor is sucked up from polar ice caps during the martian summer.

“We were all surprised to find water so high in the atmosphere,” said Shane W. Stone, a doctoral student in planetary science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. “The measurements we used could have only come from MAVEN as it soars through the atmosphere of Mars, high above the planet’s surface.”

This artist concept shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

In addition to warmer weather helping to move the water vapor, it is also affected by dust storms. These periodic storms have strong winds that help lift the water vapor higher. And once water vapor moves through the atmosphere, it is exposed to cosmic radiation and breaks apart into hydrogen and oxygen, which then escape into space.

“Everything that makes it up to the higher part of the atmosphere is destroyed, on Mars or on Earth,” Stone explained, “because this is the part of the atmosphere that is exposed to the full force of the Sun.”

The researchers found a particular storm over two days in June 2018 caused 20 times more water than normal to appear in the atmosphere. And in a 45-day period, Mars lost as much water as it normally does in one Mars year (around two Earth years). This means scientists need to adjust their models of how water moves and is lost from Mars.

“What’s unique about this discovery is that it provides us with a new pathway that we didn’t think existed for water to escape the Martian environment,” said Mehdi Benna, a Goddard planetary scientist and co-investigator of MAVEN’s NGIMS instrument. “It will fundamentally change our estimates of how fast water is escaping today and how fast it escaped in the past.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA has lost communication with the Ingenuity Mars helicopter
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. This image was taken on April 5, the 45th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity has had a remarkable lifespan and has proven to be a greater success than anyone imagined. Originally designed to perform just five flights over the surface of Mars, the helicopter has now performed more than 70. However, NASA has now announced that it has lost contact with the helicopter, though it's unclear how serious this problem is.

The helicopter was performing its 72nd flight, which was an adjustment and correction to a previous flight that was cut short. Flight 71 was intended to be a journey of 1,175 feet (358 meters), but when the helicopter made this flight earlier in the month, it traveled just a third of that. The problem was related to its downward-facing camera, which uses surface indications for autonomous navigation. The helicopter was traveling over a particularly featureless expanse of the surface, and the lack of landmarks appeared to cause a problem with its navigation, forcing the flight to end early.

Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter forced to cut short latest flight
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s Mars helicopter has now completed an impressive 71 flights on the red planet since its first hover there in April 2021.

While most of the flights have taken place without any difficulties, the latest one was cut short after Ingenuity’s navigation system found it difficult to cope with the “relatively featureless terrain,” which consisted of “sand ripples with few or no rocks,” according to a social media post by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is overseeing the mission.

Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter just flew a colossal distance
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image on May 22, 2021 using its black and white navigation camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight.

NASA’s plucky Ingenuity helicopter has just completed its 69th flight on Mars, setting a new distance record in the process.

The 4-pound, 19-inch-tall helicopter flew a colossal 2,315 feet (705 meters) on Wednesday, edging past its previous record of 2,310 feet (704 meters) set in April 2022. That's like flying nine blocks north from Manhattan's Times Square to 54th Street.

Read more