The Science of Mars Through Time:

• Over the past decades, the robotic exploration of the planet Mars has produced a wealth of geological observations. They show that Mars has not always been the desert planet of today. It has seen eras conducive to rivers and lakes, ice ages, and even periods with a collapsed atmosphere. These different epochs are the reason why Mars remains the objective of space agencies, as they evoke the possibility of past habitability and spectacular climate changes. Yet, in spite of all the data, the climatic processes that have shaped Mars’ surface through time remain largely unknown. What happened on Mars? Was the Red Planet suitable for life? What explains its evolution?


• The objective of this project is to develop numerical models to simulate the past environments of Mars. A completely new “Mars Evolution Model” is created by asynchronously coupling hydrology, glacial flows and ground ice models with a new generation 3D Global Climate Model (GCM). This GCM is derived from the one that we have previously designed to simulate present day Mars, but we radically update it using new technologies to represent the details of the surface as well as all the processes that affected Mars when its environment evolved because of the oscillations of its orbit and obliquity, during changes in the atmospheric composition, or through events like meteoritic impacts or volcanic eruptions. We will highlight the last ten millions years that have been recorded in the polar layered deposits, whose formation will be simulated for the first time realistically. These new tools address numerous enigmas found in Mars sciences. They also offer a new platform to study specific processes such as the atmospheric escape through time or the chemical alteration of the soil. Furthermore, the project test our capacity to model planetary environments and climate changes, as well as provide lessons on the evolution of terrestrial planets and the possibility of life elsewhere.

  Mars Through Time: is an ERC "advanced project". Official end of the project : 30/11/2025.

  Team:

PI: François Forget (CNRS Scientist)
Ehouarn Millour (CNRS Research Engineer): Chief Research engineer	Aymeric Spiga (Professor, Sorbonne University): High resolution modelling
Martin Turbet (CNRS Scientist): Early Mars modelling	Antony Delavois (Engineer, 2019-2020 ; PhD Student, 2020-2022): Early Mars
Alexandre Gauvin (Postdoc): Hydrology	Lucas Lange (PhD Student): GCM model, low obliquity climate.
Yangchang Luo (Postdoc): Photochemistry	Maxime Maurice (Postdoc): Early Mars atmosphere
Joseph Naar (PhD Student): Water cycle, high obliquity.	Thomas Pierron (PhD Student): Dust cycle and dust storms
Romain Vandemeulebrouck (Research Engineer): Planetary Evolution Model	Eran Vos (Postdoc): Recent climate changes

  Publications

  Other ressources

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 835275)