Related papers: Forbidden atomic oxygen emissions in the Martian d…

The Red Planet has fascinated humans for millennia, especially for the last few centuries, and particularly during the Space Age. The nagging suspicion of extant Martian life is both fed by, and drives the many space missions to Mars and…

Active dark flows known as recurring slope lineae have been observed on the warmest slopes of equatorial Mars. The morphology, composition and seasonality of the lineae suggest a role of liquid water in their formation. However, internal…

The detection of biologically important, organic molecules on Mars is an important goal that may soon be reached. However, the current small number of organic detections at the Martian surface may be due to the harsh UV and radiation…

We utilize data from the MAVEN Radio Occultation Science Experiment (Withers et al., 2020) - with unprecedented coverage in solar zenith angle - to isolate the effects that local time and season induce on the photochemical ionosphere of…

We present a model of radiative transfer through atmospheric particles based on Monte Carlo methods. This model can be used to analyze and remove the contribution of aerosols in remote sensing observations. We have developed a method to…

The availability of Martian atmospheric data provided by several Martian missions broadened the opportunity to investigate and study the conditions of the Martian ionosphere. As such, ionospheric models play a crucial part in improving our…

Motility is a ubiquitous feature of microbial life on Earth, and is widely regarded as a promising biosignature candidate. In the search for motile organisms, it is therefore valuable to have rough estimates for the number of such microbes…

One of the frontier research fields of exoplanetary science is the study of the composition and variability of exoplanetary atmospheres. This field is now moving from the gas giant planets towards the smaller and colder telluric planets,…

Present-day Mars is cold and dry, but mineralogical and morphological evidence shows that liquid-water existed on the surface of ancient Mars. In order to explain this evidence and assess ancient Mars's habitability, one must understand the…

Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a set of system-level constraints linking (i) target pressures & compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to the required radiative control, (iii) inventories…

Explaining the evidence for surface liquid water on early Mars has been a challenge for climate modelers, as the sun was ~30% less luminous during the late-Noachian. We propose that the additional greenhouse forcing of CO2-H2…

We examine the history of the loss and replenishment of the Martian atmosphere using elemental and isotopic compositions of nitrogen and noble gases. The evolution of the atmosphere is calculated by taking into consideration various…

Nitrous oxide (N2O) -- a product of microbial nitrogen metabolism -- is a compelling exoplanet biosignature gas with distinctive spectral features in the near- and mid-infrared, and only minor abiotic sources on Earth. Previous…

We report the results of a search for molecular oxygen (O2) toward the Orion Bar, a prominent photodissociation region at the southern edge of the HII region created by the luminous Trapezium stars. We observed the spectral region around…

We have reconstructed longitude-latitude maps of column dust optical depth (CDOD) for Martian year (MY) 34 (May 5, 2017 --- March 23, 2019) using observations by the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter…

Understanding the diurnal behavior of lee wave clouds on Mars provides critical insight into the planet's mesoscale atmospheric dynamics and their interaction with surface topography. Lee wave clouds exhibit distinct spatial and temporal…

We present a retrieval algorithm for nitric oxide (NO) number densities from measurements from the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY, on Envisat) nominal limb mode (0--91 km). The NO number…

By measuring the regular oscillations of the density of CO$_{2}$ in the upper atmosphere (between 120 and 190~km), the mass spectrometer MAVEN/NGIMS (Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN/Neutral Gas Ion Mass Spectrometer) reveals the local…

Several measurements, including the data from the laser spectrometer in the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite on the Curiosity Rover in Gale crater, have measured seasonal variations in atmospheric methane at the 0.7 ppbv (parts per…

With a Monte-Carlo model we investigate the escape of hot oxygen and carbon from the martian atmosphere for four points in time in its history corresponding to 1, 3, 10, and 20 times the present solar EUV flux. We study and discuss…