Dynamic Habitability of Mars

Understanding the dynamic habitability of Mars can provide new insights about the most favorable locations to find biosignatures, as well as the locations that may have most recently hosted life. We are investigating the environmental habitat suitability of Mars across recent times to create a time­ dependent map of recent regions of dynamic habitability.

Objectives

Resources

Research Team

Alejandro Soto

Planetary Scientist and Aerospace Engineer

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)

Edgard Rivera-Valentín

Planetary Scientist

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Abel Méndez

Planetary Astrobiologist

PHL @ UPR Arecibo

Andrea S. Jiménez Moreno

Geologist

UPR Mayagüez

References

Soto, A., Mischna, M., Schneider, T., Lee, C., & Richardson, M. (2015). Martian atmospheric collapse: Idealized GCM studies. Icarus, 250, 553-569.

Rivera-Valentín, E. G., Chevrier, V. F., Soto, A., & Martínez, G. (2020). Distribution and habitability of (meta) stable brines on present-day Mars. Nature Astronomy, 4(8), 756-761.

Méndez, A., Rivera-Valentín, E. G., Schulze-Makuch, D., Filiberto, J., Ramírez, R. M., Wood, T. E., ... & Haqq-Misra, J. (2021). Habitability models for astrobiology. Astrobiology, 21(8), 1017-1027.

This Research is Supported by the NASA Habitable Worlds Grant 80NSSC24K0077