Did Mars Lose Its Atmosphere Early in Its Evolution?

NASA has been making a lot of headlines with recent discoveries on Mars, and fans of the red planet are in for good news: they're going again, bigger and better than ever.  There's the Mars Surface Laboratory, the ExoMars rover, and flying above them all will be MAVEN.

Mars has been balding like a
middle-aged banker for some time now, a presumably thick and lustrous
atmosphere which allowed surface water having been lost some time ago.
Just why this should have happened, and what the current rate of loss
is, are questions the MAVEN will hope to find answers to.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission will examine the
evolution of Mars' atmosphere, as well as underlining their dedication
to acronyms even when they require almost random capitalization and a
dictionary.  A 'maven' is an expert, by the way, and in late 2014 this
orbiter will know more about Mars' atmosphere than anything ever has.

It should, because it'll be flying through it.  The MAVEN will be
orbiting low enough to scoop out samples of the air not only to find
out what's there, but also what isn't.

One theory is that Mars lost its magnetic field, without which it was
defenseless against the brutal onslaught of solar radiation which
stripped anything not nailed down (like air) off the planet.  You may
remember this from an explanation in 'The Core', but we at the Galaxy
must recommend against thinking about "The Core" and real science at
the same time in the strongest possible terms.  It's like mixing matter
and antimatter: not something you want to do inside your skull.

The MAVEN is classified as a scout mission, with a modest budget of
only half a billion dollars.  You see, cooler people get to play with
lots more money.

Luke McKinney.

MAVEN

Related Galaxy posts:

Unraveling
the Mysteries of -Clues to Climate Change on Earth?
Movie of NASA's Sites on for Future Landings & Search for Ancient Life
Exploration: Secrets of the Soil
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
New Phoenix Mission Technology to Search for Life
Is there an Interplanetary Mars-Earth Microbe Shuttle?
"The Overview Effect": Is Space Travel Next Step in Human Evolution?
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited -NASA's Phoenix Probe & the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Phoenix Lander and the 'Canals' of Mars