A newly released image of Mars shows an icy scene, with ribbons of red and white dancing across the frosty landscape near the planet’s south pole, according to a Spaces report.
While the snowy scene might evoke the feeling of a “winter wonderland” on the Red Planet, it was actually captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft. This means that the frozen image actually represents spring in Mars’ southern hemisphere and the icing of ice. Mars is waning.
And just six days before a large part of the Earth celebrates the New Year, on December 26, the Red Planet will begin its new year, which will last 687 days on Earth.
And the planet has four seasons, winter, spring, summer and autumn, and just like on Earth, the winter of the Red Planet is cold and warm in summer, although winter is colder than our season, as temperatures on Mars drop to minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit. (minus 60 degrees Celsius).
The Christmas period is also special for Mars Express, and Christmas Day 2022 marks the 19th anniversary of the spacecraft’s arrival to Mars.
Arguably the most striking features in the newly released image are two massive impact craters, which are associated with alternating layers of water ice and sediments called “polar layered sediments.” These deposits can also be seen in the ridges extending between the two craters.
As the ice dries up, more higher elevation areas appear frost-free, and throughout the image dark sand dunes stream through surface frost in other areas.
The dune fields also appear as sharp ridges running parallel to the direction of the most prevalent winds and in keeping with the shape of the main features.
Scientists believe that the dust that fills these dunes is dark because it originates from buried material from volcanoes that erupted in the ancient history of Mars and that were eventually exposed to strong Martian winds that carried them easily across the surface of the Red Planet.
Other dark spots in the image represent this dust and the work of jets that blast across the icy surface when the underlying carbon dioxide ice turns directly into a gas, a process called sublimation. These jets shoot fountains of dust into the Martian atmosphere, then settle into dark spots on planet surface.
However, these are not the only elements in the image resulting from sublimation. The polar region is dotted with a number of large, irregular features produced by sublimation ice. These look like empty lakes carved into the surface of Mars, with a clear example of this visible in the upper left corner of the image. new.
Observing these features from orbit means scientists can observe the processes that are shaping the Martian surface and changing the appearance of the polar regions.