TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — A University of Arizona camera perched on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back a number of images showing us Earthlings what winter looks like on the Martian surface.
The pictures offer a glimpse of what Mars looks like at its extreme latitudes when the red planet experiences sub-zero wintertime temperatures, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Scientists say ice, snow and frost on Mars are a combination of frozen water and carbon dioxide.
Images of the frozen Martian landscape show the influence of the planet's geography on the snow, ice and frost patterns: Only slopes facing the poles are cold enough to retain a layer of frost, for example, and as ice begins to thaw, a buildup of gas under ice can cause fans of dust to scatter across the surface, creating unique landforms and helping scientists study wind on Mars.
Photos below were taken by the HiRISE camera, built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo. and operated at the U of A.
According to NASA scientists, these images are accompanied by frigid temperatures hard to fathom on Earth. At the poles, it can reach -190º.
“Enough [snow] falls that you could snowshoe across it,” said Sylvain Piqueux, a Mars scientist at JPL. “If you were looking for skiing, though, you’d have to go into a crater or cliffside, where snow could build up on a sloped surface.”
But if you were to examine a Martian snowflake, composed of carbon dioxide molecules, you'd notice a big difference in relation to Earth's water-based snowflakes: “Because carbon dioxide ice has a symmetry of four, we know dry-ice snowflakes would be cube-shaped,” Piqueux said.
Here on Earth, every snowflake has six sides.
Find out more from Piqueux about what winter is like on Mars in the video below:
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