Related papers: Geochemistry constrains global hydrology on Early …
The detection of geologically recent channels at the end of the twentieth century rapidly suggested that liquid water could have been present on Mars up to recent times. A mechanism involving melting of water ice during ice ages in the last…
Seasonal flows on warm slopes, or recurring slope lineae ("RSL"), have been presented as strong evidence for currently flowing water on Mars. This assumption was supported by a correlation between activity and warm temperatures, and by the…
Reducing atmospheres have recently emerged as a promising scenario to warm the surface of early Mars enough to drive the formation of valley networks and other ancient aqueous features that have been detected so far on the surface of Mars.…
The ratio of nitrogen isotopes in the Martian atmosphere is a key constraint on the planet's atmospheric evolution. However, enrichment of the heavy isotope expected due to atmospheric loss from sputtering and photochemical processes is…
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$500 Myr. Because of the high…
Post-Noachian Martian paleochannels indicate the existence of liquid water on the surface of Mars after about 3.5 Gya (Irwin et al., 2015; Palucis et al., 2016). In order to explore the effects of variations in CO$_{2}$ partial pressure and…
Latest research in planet formation indicate that Mars formed within a few million years (Myr) and remained a planetary embryo that never grew to a more massive planet. It can also be expected from dynamical models, that most of Mars'…
Recent findings suggest Mars may have been a clement environment for the emergence of life, and may even have compared favorably to Earth in this regard. These findings have revived interest in the hypothesis that prebiotically important…
Recent detection of exoplanets with Earth-like insolation attracts growing interest in how common Earth-like aqua planets are beyond the solar system. While terrestrial planets are often assumed to capture icy or water-rich planetesimals, a…
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…
The impactor flux early in Mars history was much higher than today, so sedimentary sequences include many buried craters. In combination with models for the impactor flux, observations of the number of buried craters can constrain…
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…
The isotopic signature of atmospheric carbon offers a unique tracer for the history of the Martian atmosphere and the origin of organic matter on Mars. Photolysis of CO$_{2}$ is known to induce strong isotopic fractionation of carbon…
Early Mars had rivers, but the cause of Mars' wet-to-dry transition remains unknown. Past climate on Mars can be probed using the spatial distribution of climate-sensitive landforms. We analyzed global databases of water-worked landforms…
Mars' surface bears the imprint of valley networks formed billions of years ago and their relicts can still be observed today. However, whether these networks were formed by groundwater sapping, ice melt, or fluvial runoff has been…
Mars shares many similarities and characteristics to Earth including various geological features and planetary structure. The remarkable bimodal distribution of elevations in both planets is one of the most striking global features…
Recent observations have evidenced traces of methane CH4 heterogeneously distributed in the martian atmosphere. However, because the lifetime of CH4 in the atmosphere of Mars is estimated to be around 300-600 years on the basis of…
The decay of the martian atmosphere - which is dominated by carbon dioxide - is a component of the long-term environmental change on Mars from a climate that once allowed rivers to flow to the cold and dry conditions of today. The minimum…
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…
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…