NASA has released a new video that gives space lovers a front-row seat to what winters on Mars looks like.
Despite being further from the Sun, winter on Mars isn’t much different from winter here on Earth, NASA says. The space agency released a new video in which it details how snow falls on the Red Planet and how ice and frost form on the Martian surface. Despite the similarities, though, there are also some key differences.
For starters, NASA says that Mars has two types of snow. The first type is what you’d expect to find here on Earth: Snow made of frozen water. As the Perseverance rover explores Mars in late winter, NASA says that snow continues to fall in places we can’t explore just yet. However, this first type of snow turns from a solid directly into a gas before it even touches the ground.It’s an intriguing change caused by the planet’s thinner atmosphere.
Sylvain Piquieux, a Mars scientist working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that these snowy areas can get so deep that you’d need snowshoes to cross them. And, if you wanted to ski on Mars, you would need to go into a crater or cliffside. As noted above, though, we’ve never actually seen these phenomena from the ground, as no rovers are in the areas where snow falls during winter on Mars.
However, with more missions to Mars looking to study those northern and southern poles, it’s likely we could see a rover capturing footage of snow falling on the Red Planet somewhere down the line. Of course, there are plenty of other missions to worry about before that, including a
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