NASA spacecraft finds solar 'cannonballs' may have stripped Mars of its water — proving decades-old theory

An artist's rendering comparing a cold, dry Martian environment on the left with an earlier version of the environment on the right that contained liquid water.

After nearly a decade in orbit, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has, for the first time, directly observed the process that scientists had long suspected was responsible for stripping Mars of its atmosphere.

The findings, published May 28 in the journal Science Advances, could help answer a longstanding question about how Mars transformed from a potentially habitable world with rivers and lakes into the mostly-frozen desert we see today.