The Exosphere as a Boundary: Origin and Evolution of Airless Bodies in the Inner Solar System and Beyond Including Planets with Silicate Atmospheres

TL;DR

This review explores the formation, evolution, and characteristics of exospheres and atmospheres on airless bodies and rocky exoplanets, emphasizing solar and stellar influences, surface processes, and observational insights.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of atmospheric processes on airless bodies and rocky exoplanets, integrating observational data, surface modification mechanisms, and future research directions.

Findings

Exospheres are shaped by surface composition and solar radiation.

Surface processes like sputtering and micrometeoroid impacts modify atmospheres.

Future space observatories will enhance understanding of exoplanetary exospheres.

Abstract

In this review we discuss all the relevant solar/stellar radiation and plasma parameters and processes that act together in the formation and modification of atmospheres and exospheres that consist of surface-related minerals. Magma ocean degassed silicate atmospheres or thin gaseous envelopes from planetary building blocks, airless bodies in the inner Solar System, and close-in magmatic rocky exoplanets such as CoRot-7b, HD219134b and 55 Cnc e are addressed. The depletion and fractionation of elements from planetary embryos, which act as the building blocks for protoplanets are also discussed. In this context the formation processes of the Moon and Mercury are briefly reviewed. The Lunar surface modification since its origin by micrometeoroids, plasma sputtering, plasma impingement as well as chemical surface alteration and the search of particles from the early Earth's atmosphere that were collected by the Moon on its surface are also discussed. Finally, we address important questions on what can be learned from the study of Mercury's environment and its solar wind interaction by MESSENGER and BepiColombo in comparison with the expected observations at exo-Mercurys by future space-observatories such as the JWST or ARIEL and ground-based telescopes and instruments like SPHERE and ESPRESSO on the VLT, and vice versa.