High above the thin Martian skies, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft is carrying
out a mission: determine how Mars lost its early atmosphere, and with
it, its water. While previous Mars orbiters have peered down at the
planet’s surface, MAVEN is spending part of its time gazing at the
stars, looking for subtle changes in their color as they dip through the
limb of Mars and set below the horizon. Such stellar occultations
reveal what Mars’ atmosphere is made of, and how its composition varies
with altitude. MAVEN’s observations are providing scientists with the
most detailed picture of the Mars upper atmosphere to date, helping them
understand how a once-hospitable world changed into the forbidding
desert that we see today.
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