A ‘winter wonderland’ is shown in a deeply mysterious place 140 million miles from Christmas — the surface of Mars.
At first glance, the spellbinding pictures show a snowy wilderness in the Australe Scopuli region, close to the Red Planet’s south pole.
The icy slopes have tight bends and smooth descents, but any future space traveller donning skis will need to navigate bitterly cold temperatures and hundreds of potential dust jets.
The white covering is in fact carbon dioxide ice, which is 26ft thick around the year at Mars’ south pole.
The images were taken a few days before the Martian summer solstice, when temperatures can be as high as 70F, up from lows of about –225F in winter.
Dark patches are caused by the carbon dioxide ice turning from solid material into vapour as the Maritan summer approaches.
As the sunlight shines onto the translucent top layers, the ice at the bottom begins to ‘sublimate’, creating pockets of trapped gas which eventually jet through, carrying dark dust which falls back to the surface.
Fan-shaped patterns are created, ranging from tens to hundreds of metres.
The pictures were taken by the German-built High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter in June 2022, and by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera in September 2022.
The ESA described the enigmatic scenes captured by the Mars Express as a ‘winter wonderland’ at the planet’s south pole.
The agency said: ‘Here, swirls of carbon dioxide ice and dust layers wrap around the scene, turning the Red Planet white.
‘The contrasting light and dark layers are particularly striking in the exposed faces of hills and valleys.
‘They trace out the distinctive seasonal polar layered deposits characteristic of this region, formed as layers of ice freeze with varying amounts of dust trapped within.
Not known for such wintery scenes, Mars is frequently called the Red Planet because of iron minerals in the dirt which oxidize or rust.
Earth’s neighbour is described as ‘dry, rocky and bitterly cold’ by NASA.
Spring is already underway on the planet, which means frost avalanches, carbon dioxide gas explosions and powerful winds as the ice thaws.
‘Springtime on Earth has lots of trickling as water ice gradually melts,’ said Serina Diniega, who studies planetary surfaces at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
‘But on Mars, everything happens with a bang.’
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