Deliquescing salts taking up moisture from the Mars atmosphere: Difference between revisions
Deliquescing salts taking up moisture from the Mars atmosphere (edit)
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By Elizabeth Howell - Astrobiology Magazine (NASA) Aug 28, 2014</ref> This is of especial interest since perchlorates deliquesce more easily than chlorides and at a lower temperature, so they could, potentially, take up water from the atmosphere more readily.
The perchlorates may be formed by interactions of UV and ionizing radiation with the soil. In particular silicon dioxide acts as a photocatalyst to boost the production of perchlorates in experiments using Martian regolith simulants <ref>Carrier, B.L. and Kounaves, S.P., 2015. [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2015GL064290 The origins of perchlorate in the Martian soil]. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(10), pp.3739-3745.</ref>
Though there is little by way of water vapour in the Mars atmosphere, which is also a near vacuum - still it reaches 100% humidity at night due to the low nighttime temperatures. This effect creates the Martian morning frosts, which were observed by Viking in the extremely dry equatorial regions of Mars.
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