Inteviewer: So the evolution of Mars from a warm and wet planet to the cold
and dry desert we see today is one of our solar system's
biggest secrets.
Thanks to NASA's MAVEN mission studying the martian atmosphere
we are now shedding a little bit of light on that secret.
And here to tell us more about it from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Maryland is MAVEN's Principal Investigator Dr. Bruce Jakosky.
Interviewer: Thank you for joining us.
Bruce: Thank you
Interviewer: So MAVEN is returning some exciting results on the martian atmosphere
What are we seeing?
Bruce: The MAVEN mission is all about learning the history
of the Mars invironment. We have a lot of evidence from previous
missions that ancient Mars was warmer
wetter place then the cold dry desert planet we see today.
And we want to understand the driver behind that.
To what extent has the atmosphere been lost out the top
to space, stripped away by the solar wind?
Interviewer: Now what role does atmospheric lose actually play
in Mar's ability to support life?
Bruce: With the solar wind being able to strip away the atmosphere.
We have the ability to go from a planet capable of
supporting life with liquid water at the surface
early in it's history as the atmosphere disappeared
and the planet got colder.
LIquid water would have become more scarce
more rare and eventually disappeared essentially entirely.
Mar's would have gone from a planet capable of supporting
life at the surface to one that really isn't able to support life today.
Interviewer: Wow fascinating.
So what is MAVEN telling us about the impact of the sun on the martian climate?
Bruce: We hadn't really expected that the sun would be able to affect the
geology, the atmosphere, and climate.
So we are seeing the lose of the atmosphere is driven by the sun
by the solar wind, by solar ultraviolet radiation, by solar storm events.
And over time these are capable of stripping away a large amount of atmospheric gas
and changing the climate.
Interviewer: So a NASA discovery recently has found water on Mar's surface.
How do MAVEN's results help us understand what is actually happened to water on the planet?
Bruce: The processes that we're exploring really operate over billions of years
so we are looking at the long term evolution of the climate, evolution of the atmosphere.
Some of the recent results about liquid water on the surface tell us
about trace amounts of liquid that might me present today
as a transient rather then something that is stable.
Together their telling us about the overall history
of liquid water, the history of the atmosphere as a whole.
Interviewer: Where can we go to learn more about MAVEN
and NASA's future with Mars?
Bruce: You can go to nasa.gov/maven
and there you will find some of the recent results
along with some really cool videos showing how they operate.