Constraining the history of water and climate on Mars through light element stable isotope analysis of volatiles in returned martian samples

摘要

Mars has long been considered a planet with a high potential to have been habitable in the past, when it possessed a thicker atmosphere and water flowed over its surface. The paper describes how study of the volatile inventory of Mars will help comprehend when and how the atmosphere and hydrosphere disappeared and Mars became (apparently) uninhabitable. The Mars Sample Return Program is a crucial step in enabling the high precision analyses of a variety of rock and gas samples that are necessary to understand the interlocking volatile cycles of Mars.