HOMEWORK 4, Astr 305V

Due: Thursday, October 15

In his homework you will investigate the evidence for both past evidence of liquid water on Mars and current evidence for possibly frozen water beneath the surface of Mars. The book will help here but it will not provide the most current missions, so you also need to search the official space agency web pages for the missions to Mars and discuss at least results of two experiments in some detail. The two space agencies with missions to Mars are NASA for the US and ESA for Europe.

So you need to explore the web-pages of these two agencies that discuss their missions to Mars and find e.g. press releases or discussions on the listed two topics. Discuss them separately, so spend e.g. half to one page on evidence that Mars used to have liquid water on the surface, and half to one page on the search for current evidence for frozen water closely beneath or at the surface. Make sure to properly reference your work, e.g. which mission took the data you discussed and when was that.

Finally, discuss in a few lines why Mars might have been able to have liquid water on the surface in the past but not at the present time. What do scientists think changed, e.g. in terms of the temperature on Mars and/or Mars's atmosphere composition and pressure.