How the Chemistry of Mars Both Extended and Ended Its Habitability

How the Chemistry of Mars Both Extended and Ended Its Habitability

NASA's Curiosity Rover has been exploring Gale Crater and found that carbonate materials make up to 11% of rocks in the region. These are important because carbonates formed by pulling CO2 out of Mars's atmosphere. A new paper suggests that Mars once had a self-regulating climate system that created oases of liquid water on its surface over billions of years, keeping the planet barely habitable with alternating wet and dry periods. The atmospher…

Mars lost habitability due to its own climate self-limiting cycle

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 07, 2025 Mars may once have flowed with rivers and lakes, but a new study led by University of Chicago planetary scientist Edwin Kite suggests its warm periods were fleeting and ultimately doomed by a self-regulating climate system. Published July 2 in Nature, the research presents a model in which increasing solar brightness briefly allowed water to flow before triggering a geochemical response that loc

Scientists Finally Reveal the Startling Reason Mars Lost Its Water

Mars has long captured humanity’s imagination, especially given the tantalizing evidence of ancient river valleys and dried-up lakebeds that hint at a more hospitable past. But what exactly happened to Mars’ once-present water? A new study published in Nature on July 2, 2025, offers a fresh perspective, proposing that Mars’ transition from a potential habitable world to the cold, arid planet we see today can be explained by a series of temporary…