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Mars is the Solar System's canonical small, rocky planet that transitioned from early geologic activity and surface liquid water to a cold and arid planet with a thin, cold, CO$_2$-dominated atmosphere. The evolution of Mars, in the context…
Owing to the ever-present solar wind, our vast solar system is full of plasmas. The turbulent solar wind, together with sporadic solar eruptions, introduces various space plasma processes and phenomena in the solar atmosphere all the way to…
The absence of global magnetic fields is often cited to explain why Mars lacks a dense atmosphere. This line of thought is based on a prevailing theory that magnetic fields can shield the atmosphere from solar wind erosion. However, we…
The time evolution of atmospheric dust at high southern latitudes on Mars has been determined using observations of the south seasonal cap acquired in the near infrared (1-2.65 {\mu}m) by OMEGA/Mars Express in 2005. Observations at…
Airborne dust plays an active role in determining the thermal structure and chemical composition of the present-day atmosphere of Mars and possibly the planet's climate evolution over time through radiative--convective and cloud…
Looking at the Mars-solar wind interaction on a larger spatial scale than the near Mars region, the planet can be seen as an ion source interacting with the solar wind, in many ways like a comet, but with a smaller ion source region. Here…
Atmospheric escape is an important process that influences the evolution of planetary atmospheres. A variety of physical mechanisms can contribute to escape from an atmosphere, including thermal escape, ion escape, photochemical escape, and…
Dust aerosol plays a fundamental role in the behavior and evolution of the Martian atmosphere. The first five Mars years of Mars Exploration Rover data provide an unprecedented record of the dust load at two sites. This record is useful for…
The origin of Mars's small moons, Phobos and Deimos, remains unknown. They are typically thought either to be captured asteroids or to have accreted from a debris disk produced by a giant impact. Here, we present an alternative scenario…
Annular modes explain much of the internal variability of Earth's atmosphere but have never been identified on other planets. Using reanalyses for Mars and a simulation for Titan, we demonstrate that annular modes are prominent in the…
The tenuous atmospheres of the Galilean satellites are sourced from their surfaces and produced by a combination of plasma-surface interactions and thermal processes. Though thin, these atmospheres can be studied via their auroral…
Observations of Pluto's companion planet Charon have so far yielded no compelling evidence for a persistent atmosphere. However, with the upcoming encounter of New Horizons at the Pluto-Charon system, sensitivity to detection of a possible…
Observations of exoplanet atmospheres have shown that aerosols, like in the Solar System, are common across a variety of temperatures and planet types. The formation and distribution of these aerosols are inextricably intertwined with the…
The upper atmospheres of the planets and their satellites are more directly exposed to sunlight and solar wind particles than the surface or the deeper atmospheric layers. At the altitudes where the associated energy is deposited, the…
The characteristics of irradiated solar system planetary atmospheres have been studied for decades, consequently modern planetary science benefits from an exhaustive body of ground- and space-based data. The study of extrasolar planetary…
The field of exoplanets is quickly expanding from just the detection of new planets and the measurement of their most basic parameters, such as mass, radius and orbital configuration, to the first measurements of their atmospheric…
The study of exoplanetary atmospheres is one of the most exciting and dynamic frontiers in astronomy. Over the past two decades ongoing surveys have revealed an astonishing diversity in the planetary masses, radii, temperatures, orbital…
The pervasive Mars dust is continually transported between the surface and the atmosphere. When on the surface, dust increases the albedo of darker underlying rocks and regolith, which modifies climate energy balance and must be quantified.…
The New Horizons spacecraft will achieve a wide range of measurement objectives at the Pluto system, including color and panchromatic maps, 1.25-2.50 micron spectral images for studying surface compositions, and measurements of Pluto's…
Extrasolar planets appear in a chemical diversity unseen in our own solar system. Despite their atmospheres being cold, continuous and transient plasma processes do affect these atmosphere where clouds form with great efficiency. Clouds can…