Produced by: Tarun Mishra Designed by: Manoj Kumar
A study published in Nature Geoscience reports the discovery of water frost on Mars, found on the Tharsis Montes volcanoes near the Martian equator.
The frost deposits are estimated to contain about 10,000 tons of water, equivalent to 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Credit : Brown University
The discovery is based on data from over 30,000 images captured by the European Space Agency’s ExoMars and Mars Express missions.
Researchers suggest that the frost undergoes a daily cycle of sublimation and deposition during the Martian cold seasons, swapping between the surface and atmosphere.
The frost appears only for a few hours after sunrise before evaporating in the sunlight. It is incredibly thin, about one-hundredth of a millimetre thick, or the width of a human hair.
The frost sits in the calderas of the volcanoes. Researchers propose that unique air circulation above these mountains creates a microclimate allowing the frost to form.
Adomas Valantinas, the study’s lead author from Brown University, suggests that this frost may be a remnant of an ancient climate cycle, indicating past precipitation or snowfall on these volcanoes.
Understanding the formation of this frost could help scientists learn more about Mars’s water distribution and atmospheric dynamics, essential for future exploration and the search for life.