A new study published last month in Nature Astronomy may finally reveal more about Mars’ catastrophic past. One of the main goals of the new research was to learn more about what happens to Mars’ magnetosphere, which many believe has vanished once in the planet’s past.

This latest study relies heavily on data obtained by NASA’s Insight Lander and China’s Zhurong rover. The data obtained by these two spacecraft points to some interesting discoveries, including that the planet Mars has small pockets of magnetism of different sizes in different places.

These differences in magnetism at different locations are also quite extreme. Normally, the average stellar magnitude of the Martian surface is only 200 nT. However, InSight has recorded values ​​up to 2000 nT. While this huge difference was noticeable, it became even more pronounced when Zhurong found a magnitude of only 20 nT somewhere on another planet. Thus, there seems to be parts of the planet where the magnetosphere is still stronger.

However, other areas are much weaker, leading many to believe that change could be a disaster. And understanding how and even when the Martian magnetosphere disappeared or changed is vital to the ongoing efforts of NASA and others to study the Red Planet.

With NASA planning a manned mission to Mars in the next ten years, understanding how the planet got to where it is today, and even learning about the conditions that brought it here, will provide a lot of useful information for astronomers. And it will help us better understand the Red Planet as a whole. Details on this new discovery can be read in a paper led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.