NASA is making the case for a “winter wonderland” on Mars.
“Dreaming of a white Christmas” would possibly by no means recall to mind the alien landscapes that seem at frigid corners of the Pink Planet. However the space company is enthused by all of it. Its many missions over the previous a number of a long time reveal icy oddities on Mars, in addition to how a lot Mars generally resembles Earth.
As NASA is now one mission deep into its Artemis program, studying how people can thrive off our planet is essential. Water ice is a invaluable discovery to that finish. And the new video (opens in new tab) from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California — a significant hub for NASA’s robotic explorers in space — reveals what snow, frost and ice seems to be like on Mars.
Associated: Mars is a ‘winter wonderland’ in this frosty (and stunning) image
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“Should you go to the best areas, you can see water ice, similar to the one we have now on Earth,” JPL Mars scientist Sylvain Piquex says within the Dec. 21 video, which NASA released on YouTube (opens in new tab). When NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander scraped the arctic Martian floor in 2008, it noticed water ice slightly below the floor.
“That is the type of water ice that astronauts may probably use sooner or later after we go there,” Piquex provides.
Mars additionally has dry ice, a stable type of carbon dioxide (CO2). Quite than soften, like water ice does, CO2 ice sublimates. And as this materials turns from stable to gasoline, it creates alien landscapes.
“For instance, we see spider-shaped options, followers, geysers, Dalmatian spots, fried eggs, all types of distinctive objects which might be actually difficult to know, however which might be lovely and distinctive to Mars,” Piquex says.
Ice crystals additionally fall on Mars, like snow on Earth. When Phoenix used its Canadian-built LIDAR (or, gentle detection and ranging) to shoot a laser into the planet’s sky, it detected water ice crystals falling from a cloud.
Frost additionally coats some locations on Mars. NASA’s Viking landers captured pictures of water frost within the Nineteen Seventies, and extra lately, its Odyssey spacecraft and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have noticed its CO2 frost.
“CO2 frost [is] one thing that we do not have on Earth. This can be very chilly the place you’ll discover CO2 ice, one thing like -190 levels Fahrenheit,” Piquex says.
That is a lot colder than a December “bomb cyclone” that the U.S. is gearing as much as face this weekend.
However NASA put winters on these two planets into perspective in an accompanying statement (opens in new tab).
“No area of Mars will get quite a lot of toes of snow, most of which falls over extraordinarily flat areas,” the assertion reads. “Chilly as it’s, don’t anticipate snow drifts worthy of the Rocky Mountains.”
Observe Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
