Chemical composition Mars atmosphere

Jupiter and Uranus are outer planets composed mainly of gases. Jupiter s atmosphere contains reddish-brown clouds of ammonia. Uranus has an atmosphere made up mainly of hydrogen and helium with clouds of water vapor. This combination looks greenish to an outside observer. In addition, Mars has an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide, and Venus has a permanent cloud cover of sulfur dioxide that appears pale yellow to an observer. Mercury has no permanent atmosphere. Saturn has 1 km thick dust and ice rings that orbit the planet. The eight planets in our solar system are diverse, each having different chemical compositions within and surrounding the planets. Out Earth is by far the friendliest planet for human existence. 

The necessary starting point for any study of the chemistry of a planetary atmosphere is the dissociation of molecules, which results from the absorption of solar ultraviolet radiation. This atmospheric chemistry must take into account not only the general characteristics of the atmosphere (constitution), but also its particular chemical constituents (composition). The absorption of solar radiation can be attributed to carbon dioxide (C02) for Mars and Venus, to molecular oxygen (02) for the Earth, and to methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) for Jupiter and the outer planets. 

For most of the chemical elements, the relative abundances of their stable isotopes in the Sun and solar nebula are well known, so that any departures from those values that may be found in meteorites and planetary materials can then be interpreted in terms of planet-forming processes. This is best illustrated for the noble gases neon, argon, krypton, and xenon. The solar isotopic abundances are known through laboratory mass-spectrometric analysis of solar wind extracted from lunar soils (Eberhardt et al., 1970) and gas-rich meteorites. Noble gases in other meteorites and in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars show many substantial differences from the solar composition, due to a variety of nonsolar processes, e.g., excesses of " Ar and... 

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