Abstract
Martian meteorites are the only samples from Mars available for extensive studies in laboratories on Earth. Among the various unresolved science questions, the question of the Martian atmospheric composition, distribution, and evolution over geological time still is of high concern for the scientific community. Recent successful space missions to Mars have particularly strengthened our understanding of the loss of the primary Martian atmosphere. Noble gases are commonly used in geochemistry and cosmochemistry as tools to better unravel the properties or exchange mechanisms associated with different isotopic reservoirs in the Earth or in different planetary bodies. The relatively low abundance and chemical inertness of noble gases enable their distributions and, consequently, transfer mechanisms to be determined. In this review, we first summarize the various in situ and laboratory techniques on Mars and in Martian meteorites, respectively, for measuring noble gas abundances and isotopic ratios. In the second part, we concentrate on the results obtained by both in situ and laboratory measurements, their complementarity, and the implications for the Martian atmospheric dynamic evolution through the last billions of years. Here, we intend on demonstrating how the various efforts established the Mars-Martian meteorites connection and its significance to our understanding of the red planet.
Highlights
Introduction and BackgroundsNoble gases, namely, helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon (He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe), have been used as tools addressing a wide spectrum of scientific questions associated with terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials [1,2]
The Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyzer (MENCA) is one of the science instruments onboard the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) mission; it was equipped with a quadrupole mass spectrometer which is capable of total pressure measurements, thanks to a Bayard Alpert gauge [43,44]
Vacuum crushing is extensively used in, e.g., terrestrial mantle materials when searching for noble gases trapped in fluid inclusions, where usually a few grams of sample are crushed at a pressure of 1500–2000 psi
Summary
Helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon (He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe), have been used as tools addressing a wide spectrum of scientific questions associated with terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials [1,2]. Mars, where during the recent decades, four space missions have measured atmospheric composition in the Martian atmosphere, including the noble gas abundances as well as their isotopic ratios by mass spectrometry or EUV spectroscopy: the Viking suites of missions (1976–1982), the Curiosity rover on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (2012), the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN, 2014), or the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM, 2014). 79001 showed a 1:1 correlation (on a log–log plot) with the volume abundances measured for Martian atmosphere by the the Viking mission (Figure 2) [22]. Necessary noble gas and abundances and in planetary atmospheres represent a their isotopic ratios provided the determining link between the surface of Mars and suggested primary focus in planetary atmosphere exploration.
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