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Understanding the sources of lunar water is crucial for studying the history of lunar evolution, and also the solar wind interaction with the Moon and other airless bodies. Recent observations revealed lunar hydration is very likely a…
Interactions between the winds of stars and the magnetospheres and atmospheres of planets involve many processes, including the acceleration of particles, heating of upper atmospheres, and a diverse range of atmospheric loss processes.…
Atmospheric mass loss is thought to have strongly shaped the sample of close-in exoplanets. These atmospheres should be lost isotropically, leading to no net migration on the planetary orbit. However, strong stellar winds can funnel the…
The atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are known to have been modified as a consequence of the impact degassing and atmospheric erosion during the late accretion. Despite the commonality of these processes, there are distinct gaps --…
Experiments, analyses, and simulations have shown that the engine exhaust plume of a Mars lander large enough for human spaceflight will create a deep crater in the martian soil, blowing ejecta to approximately 1 km distance, damaging the…
The martian atmosphere hosts dynamical phenomena ranging from planet-encircling dust storms to mesoscale orographic clouds and nocturnal low-level jets. General circulation model show capability to simulate these phenomena, but is…
Mars exploration motivates the search for extraterrestrial life, the development of space technologies, and the design of human missions and habitations. Here we seek new insights and pose unresolved questions relating to the natural…
The gullies on Mars were discovered in the year 1999.Since then several hypotheses have appeared trying to explain the presence of these gullies. The main hypotheses are the ones which suggest that some liquid, water or CO2, was responsible…
Experiments were performed to study how rocket exhaust blows soil in lunar and Martian conditions. Jets of gas were blown downwardly at various granular materials while a camera recorded the formation of scour holes as the material was…
The presence of the ancient valley networks on Mars indicates that the climate at 3.8 Ga was warm enough to allow substantial liquid water to flow on the martian surface for extended periods of time. However, the mechanism for producing…
Mars is the next milestone in human exploration. However, there are still several challenges that must be assessed to ensure appropriate conditions in a future settlement. Communications services will be essential for this task, providing…
Our aim in this note is to introduce and study a mathematical model for the description of traveling sand dunes. We use surface flow process of sand under the effect of wind and gravity. We model this phenomena by a non linear…
Intense bombardment of solar system planets in the immediate aftermath of protoplanetary disk dissipation has played a key role in their atmospheric evolution. During this epoch, energetic collisions will have removed significant masses of…
While dust is a key parameter of Mars climate, its behaviour from one year to the next can appear erratic. This variability is notably related to Global Dust Storms (GDS) which occur only certain years with different onset, duration and…
On the basis of geological evidence, it is often stated that the early martian climate was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface thanks to the greenhouse effect of a thick atmosphere. We present 3D global climate simulations…
Previous observations have shown that, during Martian dust storms, the peak of the ionosphere rises in altitude. Observational studies of this type, however, have been extremely limited. Using 13 years of ionospheric peak altitude data from…
In this study we present the analysis of the dust properties of a local storm imaged in the Atlantis Chaos region on Mars by the OMEGA imaging spectrometer on March 2nd 2005. We use the radiative transfer model MITRA to study the dust…
Ancient sediments provide archives of climate and habitability on Mars. Gale Crater, the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), hosts a 5 km high sedimentary mound. Hypotheses for mound formation include evaporitic, lacustrine,…
Ripples are the most fundamental and ubiquitous aeolian bedforms formed on sandy surfaces, but their small size and fast response times make them inherently difficult to measure. However, these attributes also make ripples excellent flow…
Lakes existed on Mars later than 3.6 billion years ago, according to sedimentary evidence for deltaic deposition. The observed fluvio-lacustrine deposits suggest that individual lake-forming climates persisted for at least several thousand…