* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Martian north pole

Blobrana · L

Polar Cliffs and Falling Blocks

There is an ice sheet at the North Pole of Mars that is a few miles thick at its center. At some places (like in this image) it ends in steep cliffs that can be about 800 meters high.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Mars' northern polar regions

A newly released image from ESA's Mars Express shows the north pole of Mars during the red planet's summer solstice. All the carbon dioxide ice has gone, leaving just a bright cap of water ice.
This image was captured by the orbiter's High-Resolution Stereo Camera on 17 May 2010 and shows part of the northern polar region of Mars during the summer solstice. The solstice is the longest day and the beginning of the summer for the planet's northern hemisphere.

Blobrana · L

NASA Orbiter Penetrates Mysteries of Martian Ice Cap

Data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have helped scientists solve a pair of mysteries dating back four decades and provided new information about climate change on the Red Planet.
The Shallow Radar, or SHARAD, instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed subsurface geology allowing scientists to reconstruct the formation of a large chasm and a series of spiral troughs on the northern ice cap of Mars. The findings appear in two papers in the May 27 issue of the journal Nature.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Planetary scientists solve 40-year-old mysteries of Mars' northern ice cap

Scientists have reconstructed the formation of two curious features in the northern ice cap of Mars - a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon and a series of spiral troughs - solving a pair of mysteries dating back four decades while finding new evidence of climate change on Mars.
In a pair of papers to be published in the journal Nature on May 27, Jack Holt and Isaac Smith of The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics and their colleagues describe how they used radar data collected by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to reveal the subsurface geology of the red planet's northern ice cap.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Radar Map of Buried Mars Layers Matches Climate Cycles
New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years.
Alignment of the layering patterns with the modelled climate cycles provides insight about how the layers accumulated. These ice-rich, layered deposits cover an area one-third larger than Texas and form a stack up to 2 kilometres thick atop a basal deposit with additional ice.

"The radar has been giving us spectacular results. We have mapped continuous underground layers in three dimensions across a vast area" - Jeffrey Plaut of JPL, a member of the science team for the Shallow Radar instrument.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Ice-covered martian North Pole

Rupes Tenuis

ESA's Mars Express orbiter imaged the snow-laden region of Rupes Tenuis on the martian north pole on 29 July 2008.
The images are centred around 81° north and 297° east and have a ground resolution of 41 m/pixel. They cover an area of about 44 000 km², almost as large as the Netherlands.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Martian ice cap

Blobrana · L

Mars north pole

Blobrana · L

RE: Martian north pole