Related papers: Martian Methyl Chloride. A lesson in uncertainty
NASA should design missions to Mars for the purpose of generating "Aha!" discoveries to jolt scientists contemplating the molecular origins of life. These missions should be designed with an understanding of the privileged chemistry that…
Dwarf planets Eris and Makemake have surfaces bearing methane ice of unknown origin. D/H ratios were recently determined from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of Eris and Makemake, giving us new clues to decipher the origin of…
Abundant geomorphological and geochemical evidence of liquid water on the surface of early Mars during the late Noachian and early Hesperian periods needs to be reconciled with a fainter young Sun. While a dense CO2 atmosphere and related…
Mars' polar layered deposits (PLD) are comprised of layers of varying dust-to-water ice volume mixing ratios (VMR) that may record astronomically-forced climatic variation over Mars' recent orbital history. Retracing the formation of these…
A hypothesis based on observational and theoretical results on the origin of C-type asteroids and carbonaceous chondrites is proposed. Asteroids of C-type and close BGF-types could form from hydrated silicate-organic matter accumulated in…
Ammonium hydrosulphide has long since been postulated to exist at least in certain layers of the giant planets. Its radiation products may be the reason for the red colour seen on Jupiter. Several ammonium salts, the products of NH3 and an…
Mars' wet-to-dry transition is a major environmental catastrophe, yet the spatial pattern, tempo, and cause of drying are poorly constrained. We built a globally-distributed database of constraints on Mars late-stage paleolake size relative…
Ozak et al. [2016] claimed that explicitly including the effect of CO$_2$ collisional line mixing (LM) in their radiative transfer calculations yield CO$_2$ atmospheres that are more transparent to infrared radiation than when spectra…
The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…
Numerous laboratory experiments, starting in the Viking Lander era, have reported that frictional interactions between Martian analog dust grains can catalyze electrostatic processes (i.e. triboelectrification). Such findings have been…
NASA mandate is a human mission to Mars in the 2030s and sustained exploration of Mars requires in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Exploiting the Martian water cycle (alongside perchlorate salts that depress the freezing point of water to…
The puzzling complexity of terrestrial biomolecules is driving the search for complex organic molecules in the Interstellar Medium (ISM) and serves as a motivation for many in situ studies of reservoirs of extraterrestrial organics from…
We measure the visible and near-infrared reflectance of icy analogues of the Martian surface made of CO$_2$ ice associated in different ways with H$_2$O ice and the regolith simulant JSC Mars-1. Such experimental results obtained with…
Sugars of extraterrestrial origin have been observed in the interstellar medium (ISM), in at least one comet spectrum, and in several carbonaceous chondritic meteorites that have been recovered from the surface of the Earth. The origins of…
We shortly discuss the observable consequences of the two hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth and Mars: the Lithopanspermia (Mars to Earth or viceversa) and the origin from a unique progenitor, that for Earth is called LUCA (the…
The atmospheres of small exoplanets likely derive from a combination of geochemical outgassing and primordial gases left over from formation. Secondary atmospheres, such as those of Earth, Mars and Venus, are sourced by outgassing.…
The Mars thermosphere holds clues to the evolution of the Martian climate, and has practical implications for spacecraft visiting Mars, which often use it for aerobraking upon arrival, or for landers, which must pass through it.…
The notion of liquid water beneath the ice layer at the south polar layered deposits of Mars is an interesting possibility given the implications for astrobiology, and possible human habitation. A body of liquid water located at a depth of…
Computing the tidal deformations of Mars, we explored various Mars internal structures by examining profiles that include or exclude a basal molten layer within the mantle and a solid inner core. By assessing their compatibility with a…
A recent article reported experimental observations of methane and CO2 clathrate formation at conditions similar to the interstellar medium (ISM), namely 10-30 K and 10-10 mbar. The authors conducted time-dependent reflection-absorption…