Related papers: Mars Before the Space Age
The temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) was equal to the surface temperature of Saturn's moon Titan, 94K, at a redshift z=33.5, after the first galaxies formed. Titan-like objects would have maintained this surface…
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has been in orbit around Mars since March 2006. The Context Camera (CTX) on MRO has returned over 100,000 images of the planet at approximately 5-6 meters per pixel, providing nearly global…
With approximately one ninth of Earth's mass, Mars is widely considered to be a stranded planetary embryo that never became a fully-grown planet. A currently popular planet formation theory predicts that Mars formed near Earth and Venus and…
The use of the observed positions of celestial bodies to determine the location of a navigator and to direct vessels, was an aspiration of ancient seafarers. Various peoples, in the Mediterranean as much as in the Indian Ocean, in China as…
Characterizing the Martian atmosphere is an essential objective to understand its meteorology and its climate. The lower atmosphere (< 40 km) and middle atmosphere (40-80 km) of Mars appear dynamically coupled at much higher levels than in…
Mars today has no active volcanism and its atmosphere is oxidizing, dominated by the photochemistry of CO2 and H2O. Using a one-dimensional photochemical model, we consider whether plausible volcanic gas fluxes could have switched the…
Under a terraforming scenario, a reactivated hydrological cycle on Mars will result in upwards movement of water due to evaporation and precipitation. If Mars' embryonic fossilized catchments provide inadequate drainage, Mars' limited…
This is a historian's view of how modern astronomy data can be used to discuss the shifting historical worldview of Late Antiquity. In this article an attemp is made to construct an approximate model of how the cycles of astronomical…
The evolution and escape of the martian atmosphere and the planet's water inventory can be separated into an early and late evolutionary epoch. The first epoch started from the planet's origin and lasted $\sim$500 Myr. Because of the high…
Wind is the process that connects Mars' climate system. Measurements of Mars atmospheric winds from orbit would dramatically advance our understanding of Mars and help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Multiple instrument…
Martian subsurface habitability and astrobiology can be evaluated via a lava tube cave, without drilling. MACIE addresses two key goals of the Decadal Survey (2013-2022) and three MEPAG goals. New advances in robotic architectures,…
Radio pulsars have been responsible for many astonishing astrophysical and fundamental physics breakthroughs since their discovery 50 years ago. In this review I will discuss many of the highlights, most of which were only possible because…
The Kepler Mission, launched on Mar 6, 2009 was designed with the explicit capability to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars using the transit photometry method. Results from just forty-three days of data…
The 27 satellites of Uranus are enigmatic, with dark surfaces coated by material that could be rich in organics. Voyager 2 imaged the southern hemispheres of Uranus' five largest 'classical' moons Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and…
The long-standing debate on the existence of ancient oceans on Mars has been recently revived by evidence for tsunami resurfacing events that date from the Late Hesperian geological era. It has been argued that these tsunami events…
Since the beginning of the new millennium, more than 100 $z\sim 6$ quasars have been discovered through several surveys and followed-up with multi-wavelength observations. These data provided a large amount of information on the growth of…
Over the past decade, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. The observational evidence for the existence of dark matter is reviewed: rotation curves of galaxies, weak lensing…
The lunar geological record contains a rich archive of the history of the inner Solar System, including information relevant to understanding the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and…
One of the main objectives of the Mars Exploration Program is to search for evidence of past or current life on the planet. To achieve this, Mars exploration has been focusing on regions that may have liquid or frozen water. A set of…
Mars finished forming while the solar nebula was still present, and acquired its primordial atmosphere from this reservoir. The absence of a detectable cometary xenon signature in the present-day Martian atmosphere suggests that the capture…