Solar wind turned Mars into what it is today

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Mars also had a dense atmosphere, similar to Earth’s, about 4 billion years ago. This atmosphere kept the planet warm and wet, but somehow the Mars atmosphere became vulnerable to the solar wind (probably because of the loss of the planet’s magnetic field), which resulted energized particles in the solar wind to strip off Mars’ atmosphere.

The atmosphere in Mars is still believed to be shrinking, considering that it has already lost 66 percent of the Argon in its atmosphere from the amount it had 4 billion years ago. Mar’s atmosphere was and is dominated by carbon dioxide.

The above information was collected by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is one of the eight satellites/rovers currently operating around/in Mars.

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