Winter Wonderland in Mars: NASA Footage Geysers, Spots, and Bizarre Objects Seen on Martian Surface [Look]

NASA is promoting the idea of a winter wonderland on Mars, citing its many missions over the years that have discovered icy features on the planet. As part of its Artemis program, NASA is focused on learning how humans can live and thrive off Earth, and the discovery of water ice is a key part of this effort. A new video from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, involved in NASA's space exploration efforts, shows what snow, frost, and ice look like on Mars.

According to JPL Mars scientist Sylvain Piquex, if you go to the right locations on Mars, you can find water ice similar to the kind found on Earth. In 2008, NASA's Phoenix Mars lander discovered water ice just below the surface of the planet's arctic region. Piquex states that this is the type of water ice that astronauts could use in the future when humans visit Mars.

'Bizarre' Shapes and Forms

In addition to water ice, Mars also has dry ice, a solid form of carbon dioxide (CO2) that sublimates, or turns from a solid directly into a gas, when it warms up. This process creates unique, alien-like landscapes on the planet. According to Piquex, Mars has a variety of unique and beautiful ice formations, such as spider-shaped features, fans, geysers, Dalmatian spots, and fried eggs, that are challenging to understand but unique to the planet.

Mars also experiences snowfall, with Phoenix detecting water ice crystals falling from a cloud using its light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system. Frost also covers certain areas of Mars, with NASA's Viking landers capturing images of water frost in the 1970s and more recent spacecraft, like Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, observing CO2 frost on the planet.

According to Piquex, CO2 frost is not found on Earth and is present at extremely cold temperatures, around -190 degrees Fahrenheit. However, in an accompanying statement, NASA pointed out that Mars can be cold and not experience heavy snowfall like Earth. Most of the snow on Mars falls in flat areas, and no region on the planet gets more than a few feet of snow. As a result, it is unlikely that Mars would have snow drifts like those found in the Rocky Mountains on Earth.

Snow on Mars is only found in the coldest areas of the planet, including the poles, under cloud cover, and at night. Since cameras on orbiting spacecraft cannot see through clouds and surface missions cannot withstand the extreme cold, no images of falling snow on Mars have ever been captured.

(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
Strange "fried egg features" on Mars stand out as stunning winter features on the Red Planet.

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Winter in Mars

However, scientists have been able to detect snowfall on Mars using specialized instruments, such as the Mars Climate Sounder on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which can detect light in wavelengths that are not visible to the human eye has been used to detect carbon dioxide snowfall. In 2008, the Phoenix lander, located about 1,000 miles from Mars' north pole, used a laser instrument to detect water-ice snowfall on the planet's surface.

Both water and carbon dioxide can form frost on Mars, and these types of frost are more widely distributed across the planet than snow. The Viking landers observed water frost on Mars in the 1970s, and NASA's Odyssey orbiter has observed frost forming and then sublimating away in the morning sun.

At the end of winter, when all the accumulated ice begins to "thaw" and turn into a gas, it takes on strange and beautiful shapes, such as spider-like formations, Dalmatian dog spots, fried eggs, and even Swiss cheese. This process also causes geysers to erupt, as translucent ice allows sunlight to heat gas beneath it, causing the gas to burst out and eventually send dust fans onto the surface. Scientists have studied these dust fans to learn more about the direction of Martian winds.