Continuously Changing Mars Atmosphere—Dangerous Future?
“The amount of argon that comes with the air mass stays in the atmosphere,” Economou explained. “Carbon dioxide drops, so the ratio of argon to carbon dioxide is increasing constantly until the next season.”
NASA’s Mars Rover scientists have recently launched a new long-term study about the Martian atmosphere. This study has to do with the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer by Athena, which was originally developed at the University of Chicago. As the university stated to the media, “the new instrument was designed to determine the “elemental chemistry of rocks and soils accurately in order to complement and constrain the mineralogical analyses of the other instruments”.
The new instrument would accomplish this by performing elemental analyses of the Mars surface by touching a rock or patch of soil directly. Its method will be to use alpha particles and X-rays, to accurately determine the returned sample’s abundance of all rock-forming elements—except hydrogen. This analysis of the make-up of the Martian surface provided the scientists with information—crustal formation, weathering processes, and water activity.
The new study by the scientists was suggested after Thanasis Economou, Senior Scientist at Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute, observed that the APXS instruments that were used on the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, recording fluctuations in the argon composition of the Martian atmosphere. According to Economou, “The amount of argon composition in the atmosphere is changing constantly”.
According to ESA’s article, “Seeing, touching, and smelling the extraordinarily Earth-like world of Titan,” the chemical element argon, or Ar, is present at less than 1% in the Earth’s atmosphere, which makes it the most common noble gas on Earth. It is stable because of its full outer shell, and resistant to bonding with other elements. About 1.6% of argon-40 and 5 ppm of argon –36 is in the Martian atmosphere, with a ratio of 1.6% of the argon elements. In 1973, the Mariner space probe fly-by of the planet Mercury discovered that it had a thin atmosphere of 70% argon. This is believed to be a result from gas releases as a decay product from radioactive materials on the planet. The presence of argon-40 on Titan has been found in 2005, by the Huygens probe.
During summer months, about 95% of the Martian atmosphere consist of carbon dioxide, while nitrogen accounts for about 3% and argon less than 2%. Winter is quite the opposite, setting at one of the poles. The carbon dioxide will freeze out of the atmosphere forming a polar cap, causing a low-pressure system that moves air toward the pole.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Mission History, Mission Objectives, Space Agency News, Technical Concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
