Carbon Photochemical Escape from the Martian Atmosphere: Updates and Future Directions

Over the last 3.6 billion years, Mars is believed to have lost a significant fraction of its CO2 atmosphere into space, with photochemical escape of atomic carbon being a major loss channel. I will be discussing how new laboratory measurements and spacecraft observations have allowed us to better characterize and understand the various processes leading to the photochemical escape of carbon from the present-day Martian atmosphere, and the focus areas for future investigation in order to more accurately constrain the integrated carbon loss over the last 3.6 billion years.