January 21, 2017

Mars Ice Age

Mars Ice Age

This simulated view shows Mars as it might have appeared during the height of a possible ice age in geologically recent time.

Of all Solar System planets, Mars has the climate most like that of Earth. Both are sensitive to small changes in orbit and tilt. During a period about 2.1 million to 400,000 years ago, increased tilt of Mars' rotational axis caused increased solar heating at the poles. A new study using observations from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters concludes that this polar warming caused mobilization of water vapor and dust into the atmosphere, and buildup of a surface deposit of ice and dust down to about 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres. That is the equivalent of the southern Unites States or Saudi Arabia on Earth. Mars has been in an interglacial period characterized by less axial tilt for about the last 300,000 years. The ice-rich surface deposit has been degrading in the latitude zone of 30 degrees to 60 degrees as water-ice returns to the poles.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Brown University
Explanation from: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA04933

4 comments:

  1. So there's water on Mars, and studies show a hospitable environment for mankind. NASA gave away these informations, or what? I was always told that life on Mars wasn't sustainable because of the extreme variants of temperature averaging between 0 and -410 C and that it had no atmosphere, and now it's a whole 'nother ballgame. What gives?

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    1. What you were told was true, except for the temperature range and no atmosphere. Google says that the "Surface temperatures may reach a high of about 20 °C (293 K; 68 °F) at noon, at the equator, and a low of about −153 °C (120 K; −243 °F) at the poles." Mars's atmosphere is thin and made up of mostly CO2.

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