Mars once had oceans but is now bone-dry, leaving many to wonder how the water was lost.
Mars once had oceans but is now bone-dry, leaving many to wonder how the water was lost. University of Arizona researchers have discovered a surprisingly large amount of water in the upper atmosphere of Mars, where it is rapidly destroyed, explaining part of this Martian mystery.
Shane Stone, a graduate student in the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and lead author of a new paper to be published in Science, describes himself as a planetary chemist. Once a laboratory chemist who helped to develop polymers that could be used to wrap and deliver therapeutic drugs more efficiently, he now studies the chemistry of planetary atmospheres.
Since 2014, he has worked on NASA's MAVEN mission, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution. The MAVEN spacecraft began orbiting Mars in 2014 and has been recording the composition of the upper atmosphere of Earth's planetary neighbor ever since.
Read more at: University of Arizona
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