Related papers: Mars: new insights and unresolved questions
Space weather observations and modeling at Mars have begun but they must be significantly increased to support the future of Human Exploration on the Red Planet. A comprehensive space weather understanding of a planet without a global…
The general profile and overarching goal of this proposed mission is to pioneer potentially highly beneficial (even vital) and cost-effective techniques for the future human colonization of Mars. Adopting radically new and disruptive…
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…
During the Noachian, Mars' crust may have provided a favorable environment for microbial life. The porous brine-saturated regolith would have created a physical space sheltered from UV and cosmic radiations and provided a solvent, while 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…
This paper presents an application of artificial intelligence on mass spectrometry data for detecting habitability potential of ancient Mars. Although data was collected for planet Mars the same approach can be replicated for any…
Reconciling the geology of Mars with models of atmospheric evolution remains a major challenge. Martian geology is characterized by past evidence for episodic surface liquid water, and geochemistry indicating a slow and intermittent…
Mars, lacking an intrinsic dynamo, is an ideal laboratory to comparatively study induced magnetospheres, which can be found in other terrestrial bodies as well as comets. Additionally, Mars is of particular interest to further exploration…
The intense debate about the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere has stimulated the study of methanogens adapted to terrestrial habitats that mimic Martian environments. We examinate the environmental conditions, energy sources…
Establishing a human settlement on Mars is an incredibly complex engineering problem. The inhospitable nature of the Martian environment requires any habitat to be largely self-sustaining. Beyond mining a few basic minerals and water, the…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
Special Regions on Mars are defined as environments able to host liquid water that meets certain temperature and water activity requirements that allow known terrestrial organisms to replicate, and therefore could be habitable. Such regions…
Understanding planetary habitability is one of the major challenges of the current scientific era, particularly given the discovery of a large and diverse terrestrial exoplanet population. Discerning the primary factors that contribute to…
Space exploration technology continues to expand humanity's reach beyond Earth, and even more ambitious efforts are striving to establish long-duration human settlements on Mars. The dependence of martian settlers on life-support…
The objective of this White Paper submitted to ESA's Voyage 2050 call is to get a more holistic knowledge of the dynamics of the Martian plasma system from its surface up to the undisturbed solar wind outside of the induced magnetosphere.…
There is growing evidence suggesting the presence of aqueous environment on ancient Mars, raising the question of the possibility of life in such an environment. Subsequently, with the erosion of the Martian atmosphere resulting in drastic…
It is currently uncertain as to whether methane exists on Mars. Data from the Curiosity Rover suggests a background methane concentration of a few tenths parts per billion whereas data from the Trace Gas Orbiter suggest an upper limit of…
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…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
The study of the origin of life on Earth has been broadened due to panspermia models that suggest that early life may have been transferred between planets. Mars likely once had conditions that could support life, and it is interesting…