New images of Mars show an enormous crater that measures nearly 51 miles across and is filled with ice year-round, the European Space Agency reported.
Known as the Korolev Crater, located near the Martian north pole, it’s topped by “what appears to be a large patch of fresh, untrodden snow – a dream for any lover of the holiday season,” said a statement by ESA, which released the images Thursday.
But the space agency noted that the red planet is “a little too distant for a last-minute winter getaway.” (Mars is about 140 million miles from Earth, according to NASA. The distance can vary considerably, because each planet moves in its own orbit around the sun.)
The Martian crater was named after Sergei Korolev, the chief architect of the Soviet space program. Korolev, who died in 1966, worked on missions to the moon and Mars, and the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.
The floor of the icy crater is more than a mile below its rim, which helps create a phenomenon called a cold trap, keeping the ice stable and permanently frozen, ESA said.
Christmas Day will mark 15 years since the Mars Express spacecraft began orbiting the planet. Also on Dec. 25, 2003, the Beagle 2 lander was released from the spacecraft and touched down safely on the planet’s surface, but failed to fully operate.
The photo’s oblique view of the crater is a composite created from image strips gathered by the Mars Express spacecraft’s High Resolution Stereo Camera during orbits around the planet last April, ESA said.
“At present, there is no liquid water on Mars, but there is a considerable quantity of ice,” according to DLR, Germany’s space agency. “The planet’s two polar caps consist of a mixture of carbon dioxide and water ice, which vary greatly in proportion to one another depending on the season.”
Last summer Italian scientists, upon analyzing data from the Mars Express spacecraft, said they found strong evidence of a lake of briny liquid below the surface of Mars, NPR’s Joe Palca reported.
The discovery sparked excitement about the possibility that life once existed on the planet, as scientists say liquid water is a necessary ingredient.
https://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-31614/#/gallery/33106
Korolev impact crater is located in the northern lowlands of Mars, not far from the large dune field of Olympia Undae, which surrounds part of the north polar ice cap. The crater floor, which lies two kilometres beneath its rim, is covered in a 1.8-kilometre central mound of water ice all year round. This domed deposit forms a glacier comprising around 2200 cubic kilometres of non-polar ice on Mars. That is about 50 times the volume of Lake Constance and is comparable in size to the Canadian Great Bear Lake. This leads us to assume, however, that this quantity of ice is mixed with a certain amount of dust. Smaller amounts of water ice are distributed on and around the crater edge in the form of thin layers of frost.
At present, there is no liquid water on Mars, but there is a considerable quantity of ice. The planet’s two polar caps consist of a mixture of carbon dioxide and water ice, which vary greatly in proportion to one another depending on the season. In winter, for instance, a one- to two-metre layer of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) forms on the permanent ice cap at the north pole, but then sublimates again in summer, undergoing a direct transition from solid to gas. The changing expanses of the polar caps can be observed in detail using telescopes and satellite images. A considerable quantity of ground ice has also been detected in the Martian subsoil using radar measurements. The corresponding soil layer could be permeated by up to 50 percent frozen water. However, we do not have exact figures.
-
Cool.