Stunning images captured by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter reveal a winter wonderland on Mars' south pole, covered in layers of carbon dioxide ice and dust. The phenomenon occurs due to the drop in temperatures during the Martian winter, reaching as low as -190 degrees Fahrenheit.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas—on Mars . The otherworldly landscape is, for the most part, a distinct red hue, but recent images reveal unusual frosty features that have turned the Red Planet’s south pole white. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter captured stunning views of a winter wonderland on Mars , but this isn’t your regular snowfall. Instead, Mars ’ south pole is covered in layers of carbon dioxide ice and dust.
The winter season on Mars sees temperatures drop as low as -190 degrees Fahrenheit (-123 degrees Celsius). As cold as it is, Mars doesn’t get more than a few feet of snow. Unlike snow on Earth, Martian snow comes in two flavors: water ice and carbon dioxide, or dry ice. On the one hand, water ice turns to gas before it touches the surface, due to the planet’s thin atmosphere; dry ice, on the other hand, Although it looks like a winter wonderland, the images were taken in June, when it was almost summertime at Mars’ south pole. According to an ESA, the warming rays of the Sun are causing the seasonal ice layers to begin their retreat, evident on the left side of the image where dark patches are swooping in. As sunlight shines through the dry ice’s translucent upper layers, the ice at the bottom sublimates—turns to vapor directly from a solid state—and creates pockets of trapped gas. The pressure builds up until the layers of ice at the top start to crack, sending jets of gas bursting through the surface, carrying dark dust from below. After bursting its way through, the dust then falls back onto the surface in a fan-shaped pattern guided by the wind. A view across icy hills in the Australe Scopuli region near the south pole of Mars. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin In the above view of Australe Scopuli’s seasonal ice caps, layers of ice and dust overlap in a swirling dream across the Martian surface
MARS SPACE CARBON DIOXIDE SEASONAL ICE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
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