Numerous NASA missions over the past few decades have revealed ice anomalies on Mars, as well as how similar Mars is to Earth in some ways.
A 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 places, you’ll find water ice, just like that on Earth,” Mars scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Sylvain Pecques said in a video Dec. 21, which NASA posted 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 astronauts in the future might use when we go out there,” Beckix added.
Mars also contains dry ice, which is a solid form of carbon dioxide (CO2). Instead of melting, as water ice does, carbon dioxide ice sublimes. When this substance transforms from a solid into a gaseous substance, it creates strange landscapes.
“For example, we see features in the form of spiders, fans and fried eggs. And all kinds of unique things that are really hard to figure out, but they’re beautiful and unique on Mars.”
Ice crystals also fall on Mars, like snow falls on Earth. And when the Phoenix spacecraft used Light Detection and Ranging Device (LIDAR) technology to shoot a laser into the planet’s sky, it detected water ice crystals falling from a cloud.
The frost also covers some spots on Mars: NASA’s Viking lander took pictures of water freezing in the 1970s, and finally the Odyssey spacecraft and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected the carbon dioxide freeze.
“Carbon dioxide freeze is something we don’t find on Earth,” Beckix said. It is so cold that you will find carbon dioxide ice at -190 degrees Fahrenheit (-123 degrees Celsius).” It is much colder than the “hurricane bomb” that hit the United States.
Interestingly, 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).
