Numerous NASA missions over the past several decades are revealing ice anomalies on Mars, as well as how similar Mars is to Earth in some ways.
New video from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California — a home hub for NASA explorers — reveals what snow, sleet and ice look like on Mars.
The video shows the snowy landscape on the surface of the Red Planet as if it were a “winter wonderland”.
“If you go to specific locations, you will find water ice, just like the one on Earth,” says Mars scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sylvain Pecques, in a December 21 video, which NASA released on its YouTube site.
When NASA’s Phoenix Mars probe scraped the Martian land at the north pole in 2008, it saw water ice just below the surface.
“This is the kind of water ice that astronauts in the future might use when we go out there,” adds Pickix.
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Amazing footage of a “winter wonderland” on Mars
Mars also contains dry ice, which is a solid form of carbon dioxide (CO2). Instead of melting, as water ice does, the carbon dioxide ice sublimates. As this substance transforms from a solid into a gaseous substance, it creates strange landscapes.
“For example, we see spider-shaped features, fans and fried eggs … and all sorts of unique things that are really hard to understand, but are beautiful and unique to Mars,” explains Bikix.
Ice crystals also fall on Mars, like snow on Earth. And when the Phoenix probe used LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging Instrument) technology to fire lasers into the planet’s sky, it detected water ice crystals falling from a cloud.
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Amazing footage of a “winter wonderland” on Mars
Frost also covers some places on Mars. NASA’s Viking lander took pictures of water frost in the 1970s, and more recently the Odyssey spacecraft and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected carbon dioxide frost.
“The carbon dioxide frost is something we don’t find on Earth. It’s so cold you’ll find carbon dioxide ice at -190 degrees Fahrenheit (-123 degrees Celsius), and that’s much colder than the “bomb hurricane” the states are preparing for, says Becks. United to face him this weekend.
It is noteworthy that on December 26, the red planet begins its new year, which will last 687 Earth days. The planet has four seasons, winter, spring, summer and autumn, just like on Earth. Winters on the Red Planet are much colder than on Earth, with temperatures on Mars dropping to minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit (-60 degrees Celsius).
