【Tech 24H】A team from the Institut de France recently proposed at the European Planetary Science Congress that while Mars currently has a thin atmosphere, it may have once had an atmosphere hundreds of times denser than today’s. By simulating the early solar system environment, the team estimated the total amount of comet material that reached Mars and compared it with actual observational data to deduce the mass of Mars’ primordial atmosphere. The results indicate an atmospheric pressure about 2.9 times that of modern Earth. This suggests that Mars once had a thick atmosphere, like a heavy blanket, enabling it to withstand frequent asteroid impacts.