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NASA video flies us through four billion years of Mars evolution

An artist's concept of an ancient, habitable Mars capable of supporting liquid water on its surface 4 billion years ago.

With the latest big discoveries about Mars showing us that it once had a much warmer, wetter environment, there have been some attempts to show us what that environment might have looked like. The latest, and possibly the best, was just released by the good people at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in the form of a video that covers 4 billion years of evolution on the Red Planet.

As written on the NASA Goddard YouTube account:

The artist's concept is based on evidence that Mars was once very different. Rapidly moving clouds suggest the passage of time, and the shift from a warm and wet to a cold and dry climate is shown as the animation progresses. The lakes dry up, while the atmosphere gradually transitions from Earthlike blue skies to the dusty pink and tan hues seen on Mars today.

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We're just days away from the launch of NASA's latest Mars mission, MAVEN. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter is set to blast off at 1:28 p.m. EST, on Monday, November 18th, and it will take roughly 10 months for it to make the journey to our planetary neighbour. Its one-year mission after that is to explore the atmosphere of Mars, even dipping down into the upper atmosphere at times, to find the composition of the upper layers and see how they interact with the solar wind, the rate of loss of gases into space, and hopefully give insights into how Mars lost its thick atmosphere over time.

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