How long could a planet like Mars be fit for life if it orbited a red dwarf? This is a very difficult question, but it will eventually be answered by the MAVEN spacecraft, which studies the atmosphere of the Red Planet.
“The mission of MAVEN tells us that Mars has lost a significant amount of its atmosphere and this factor could change the habitation of the planet,” said David Brain, a mission scientist and teacher from the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at the Colorado University in Boulder.
“We can use Mars as a laboratory for studying solid planets beyond our Solar System, which we do not yet know so much about.”
At the autumn meeting of the American Geophysical Society on December 13, 2017 in New Orleans, scientists reported that a detailed study of the atmosphere of Mars, which will be possible due to the mission MAVEN, can be used to determine the level of habitable rocky planets that rotate around other stars.
