Dunes, Ice Explosions, and Avalanches: NASA Is Monitoring the New Year on Mars

Dunes, Ice Explosions, and Avalanches: NASA Is Monitoring the New Year on Mars

While New Year's signifies winter in the northern hemisphere of Earth, it marks the beginning of spring in the same area of the Red Planet. The melting of ice can result in a variety of intriguing outcomes. explains Serina Diniega, a research scientist at JPL. JPL-Caltech and NASA On the Red Planet, the northern hemisphere experiences an active, even explosive, spring thaw rather than a winter wonderland. Even though New Year's Eve is quickly approaching on Earth, Mars scientists are already ahead of the game: On November 12, 2024, the Red Planet finished its orbit around the Sun, which led some experts to toast.

However, in the northern hemisphere of the planet, the Martian year, which is 687 Earth days, finishes completely differently than it does in the northern hemisphere of Earth: spring is beginning there, while winter is beginning here. The north pole is being reshaped by strong winds, carbon dioxide gas blasting from the earth, and frost avalanches tumbling down cliffsides as a result of rising temperatures and decreasing ice. There is a lot of trickling during the Earth's spring when the water ice slowly melts. However, on Mars, everything happens quickly, according to Serina Diniega, a planetary surface researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Unlike Earth, liquids cannot collect on the surface of Mars due to its thin atmosphere. Rather than melting, ice sublimates, transforming straight into a gas. Both water ice and carbon dioxide ice, which is dry ice and far more common on Mars than frozen water, will deteriorate and shatter during the abrupt spring changeover, causing many dramatic changes. "There are a lot of cracks and explosions rather than melting," Diniega stated. "It must get really noisy." Researchers examine all of this activity using the cameras and other sensors on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which was launched in 2005, in order to gain a better understanding of the forces sculpting the dynamic Martian surface. This is some of the things they monitor.

MRO's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera caught a 66-foot (20-meter) piece of free-falling carbon dioxide frost in 2015. As these surface changes are most apparent in the spring, chance sightings like this serve as a reminder of how different Mars is from Earth, Diniega added. The fact that a spacecraft like MRO has been monitoring Mars for such a long time is fortunate, Diniega said. "We have been able to witness dramatic events like these avalanches for nearly 20 years."

To investigate another peculiarity of Martian springtime, Diniega has depended on HiRISE. These are gas geysers that shoot out of the surface, releasing dark fans of dust and sand. The carbon dioxide ice sublimates energetically to produce these explosive jets. The lower layers of the ice transform into gas as sunlight passes through it, creating those dark fans of material as the pressure builds up until it explodes into the air. The best instances of the newest fans, however, won't be available until December 2025, when the southern hemisphere's spring season begins. The fans are more pronounced and larger there.

Another distinction between the two hemispheres' ice-related actions is: Scour marks that resemble enormous spider legs from space are what remain in the earth when all the ice surrounding some northern geysers has sublimated in the summer. In a JPL lab, researchers recently replicated this procedure.

In the spring, Isaac Smith of York University in Toronto finds the Texas-sized ice cap near Mars' north pole to be one of the most intriguing topics. Swirling troughs that show remnants of the red surface below are etched into the frozen dome. It has a similar effect to the swirl of milk in a cappuccino.Some of these monsters are as long as California, Smith said, adding that they are huge. "Similar troughs exist in Antarctica, but none of this size."The troughs serve as conduits for springtime wind gusts that intensify when the ice at the north pole begins to thaw, and the spiral forms have been carved over ages by swift, warm wind. The Chinook winds in the Rocky Mountains and the Santa Ana winds in Southern California are examples 

Sand is piled up on one side of Mars' sand dunes while being removed from the other by the winds that sculpt the troughs of the north pole. Similar to how dunes on Earth move over time, the mechanism induces dunes to do the same. Smith coauthored an article this past September that described how frozen arctic sand dunes are caused by carbon dioxide frost that falls on top of them during the winter. The migration of the dunes resumes in the spring after the frost completely melts.Every northern spring is slightly different, and these differences cause the ice to sublimate more quickly or more slowly, regulating the rate at which all of these surface events occur. Additionally, these odd occurrences are only a portion of Mars' seasonal variations in the southern hemisphere.