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Is a magnetosphere necessary for maintaining an atmosphere on Mars?

I've read both perspectives with regard to terraforming Mars - that the lack of a magnetic field means the solar wind will quickly strip away any atmosphere that forms around Mars, or that an atmosphere would be relatively stable on at least a scale of millions of years, and we would easily have time to replenish any losses due to the solar wind. So which is it? How violent is the solar wind really?

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  • 1 decade ago
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    Its not just a magnetic field that's important to protect the atmosphere, It's the size of the planet. Mars is too SMALL to sustain an atmosphere because it doesn't have enough MASS. A planet has to be massive enough to have strong gravitational force to keep an atmosphere from floating away into space. So even if you terraform Mars and had a strong magnetic field, it would not be able to keep an atmosphere because there's not enough gravity to keep the particles from escaping into outer space.

    Source(s): astro 101 astrobiology
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