As NASA hopes to collect 16 years of data on Mars’ atmosphere, it is appealing for the public’s assistance in locating clouds on the red planet. This information might disclose a significant mystery about the planet.
You may participate in NASA’s effort to count the clouds on Mars. Yes, the American space agency has started what may seem like a funny but crucial effort in which it will analyse the information gathered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The atmosphere of the red planet is a major focus of the data gathered during a 16-year period. Cloudspotting holds the key to NASA’s quest to understand why the Martian atmosphere is so thin. But now for the obstacle: The data must be manually sorted because software cannot be used to analyse it. Therefore, anyone may engage in this initiative and provide a hand if you wish to aid NASA in gaining a better knowledge of Mars.
NASA will monitor clouds to investigate the atmosphere of Mars.
Scientists have long been baffled by the Martian atmosphere because, despite indications that it was formerly denser, it is currently just 1% as dense as Earth’s atmosphere. On Mars, rivers and lakes are known to have previously existed, but because of the planet’s low air pressure now, they simply evaporate. Theories exist to explain it. According to a widely accepted idea, all of the water that was once present was drawn upward into the atmosphere by a variety of mechanisms, where it was broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by solar radiation and then floated out into space since hydrogen is light.
The project enters the picture here. Clouds still exist on Mars, according to scientists. Some of them are formed of carbon dioxide, while others are built of water ice. Scientists will be better able to understand the present and past of Mars’ middle atmosphere if they can comprehend the origin, motion, and pattern of these clouds.
In order to understand more about how high water vapour rises in the atmosphere, an international team of scientists is investigating cloud formation and the creation of water ice clouds. Marek Slipski, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is leading the study.