You can help identify clouds on Mars

A new citizen science project, led by researchers from NASA (the US space agency), makes it possible for volunteers to help obtain new and revealing knowledge about the atmosphere of the Red Planet through the Internet.

“Citizen science” refers to scientific research carried out with the help of volunteers without technical training. By following simple instructions, these people can do work that would otherwise have to be done by scientists and would consume an unfeasible amount of man-hours to get the project off the ground in a reasonable amount of time. By harnessing the vast workforce of people from all over, channeled via the internet, it is possible to achieve remarkable achievements.

In this new project, volunteers can help scientists identify Martian clouds in observations made by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which entered orbit of the Red Planet in 2006 and has been observing it ever since. To do this work, the person only needs a computer, a web browser and an internet connection. By lending this help, people can help unravel some of the mysteries of the Martian atmosphere. The initiative, Cloudspotting on Marsuses the citizen science platform Zooniverse.

The most important of these mysteries is why the atmosphere of Mars is only 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, even though there is ample evidence that in the past the density of the Martian atmosphere It was much larger than today.

Today, the atmospheric pressure on Mars is so low that liquid water simply vaporizes from the planet’s surface into the atmosphere. But more than a billion years ago, there were lakes and rivers covering Mars, suggesting that the atmosphere must have been much denser then than it is now.

How did Mars lose its atmosphere? One theory suggests that different mechanisms could be lifting the water into the atmosphere, where solar radiation breaks those water molecules down into hydrogen and oxygen (water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom). Hydrogen is light enough that it can rise to the edge of the atmosphere, escaping into space.

Martian clouds seen from the surface of the Red Planet by the Curiosity rover. (Photo: NASA JPL / Caltech / MSSS)

Like Earth, Mars has clouds made of water ice. But unlike Earth, it also has clouds of carbon dioxide, which form when it’s cold enough for the Martian atmosphere to freeze locally. It is hoped that with a good enough understanding of where and how these clouds appear, scientists will be able to better understand the structure of the middle part of the Martian atmosphere. This strip is located at an altitude of between 50 and 80 kilometers.

“We want to know what triggers the formation of clouds, especially water ice clouds. That could teach us how high in the atmosphere water vapor rises and during what seasons,” explains NASA’s Marek Slipski. (Font: NCYT by Amazings)