Scientists discovered says Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since 2014, has been gathering data that will allow scientists to understand changes in the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet. It is known that Mars, billions of years ago, had atmosphere and water and could have supported life. It is now barren and cold.
What Mars now has is a thin atmosphere - and even this is at risk, say scientists who have discovered that the planet has a twisted tail. The process that created this tail could also allow some of Mars' already thin atmosphere to escape to space, researchers said on science news website Science Daily.
At a press briefing on October 19 at Utah during the annual meeting of the America Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, Gina DiBraccio of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, said, "We found that Mars' magnetic tail, or magnetotail, is unique in the solar system. It's not like the magnetotail found at Venus, a planet with no magnetic field of its own, nor is it like Earth's, which is surrounded by its own internally generated magnetic field. Instead, it is a hybrid between the two."
Science Daily reported: "The team found that a process called "magnetic reconnection" must have a big role in creating the Martian magnetotail because, if reconnection were occurring, it would put the twist in the tail."