Solar wind likely stripped away much of Mars' atmosphere

NASA's newest Mars orbiter is piecing together the history and even the future of the red planet's atmosphere one measurement at a time.Scientists think that Mars was once a warmer, wetter world billions of years ago, but over time the rust-colored planet slowly shed its atmosphere to space, turning the world into the cold, dry place it is today.NASA sent the MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter to the planet in 2013 to try to help learn more about the world's past, and a series of studies published in the journal Science this week help reveal new insights into what could have happened to the small world's atmosphere.For one thing, the planet is still losing more of its atmosphere, scientists found. MAVEN found that Mars is losing about 100 grams of atmosphere per second, and that rate skyrockets during large solar storms.