Between the solar wind stripping its atmosphere and these horrific dust towers bleeding its water into space, Mars may not have ever had a chance at a stable climate.
NASA reports that these are the result of observations by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s heat-sensing Mars climate sounder instrument which can easily penetrate this dusty haze.
We’re not yet able to understand how much these towers contributed to Mars’ past water loss, David Kass, a planetary scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion laboratory and the Mars Climate Sounder instrument’s principal investigator, told me by phone. But they are telling us that the simple extrapolations that we were doing before to explain Mars’ water loss has limitations, he says.
And even though Mars’ atmosphere is roughly equal to only one percent of Earth’s, Kass said the dust is able to reach high altitudes because it is extremely fine.
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