NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has clicked a surprising image of the Pink Planet’s floor displaying frozen sand dunes within the northern hemisphere, resembling a kidney bean. The picture, taken by the Excessive-Decision Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) digicam in September 2022 and solely launched to the general public final month, might assist discover if situations on Mars might have sustained life a very long time in the past.
Not like the dunes on Earth that are consistently in movement, the kidney bean-shaped dunes on Mars seem surprisingly immobile. As per NASA, the dunes within the picture are lined in a layer of carbon dioxide frost throughout the winter on Mars. Through the chilly months, the planet’s poles can expertise nighttime temperatures as little as -123 levels Celsius which creates ideally suited situations for each snowfall and the formation of frost. However not like Earth’s snow, Mars’ snow is available in two varieties: water ice and frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice.
The frost, fabricated from each water ice and carbon dioxide ice, stops the wind from carrying up the sand and prevents the dunes from migrating till the spring thaw comes. Learning how the carbon dioxide frost adjustments beneath present situation situations might assist higher predict the previous local weather on Mars.
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Life on Mars?
Scientists have lengthy been searching for solutions in regards to the presence of life on Mars. In October final yr, a NASA examine acknowledged that microbes would possibly discover a potential residence beneath the frozen water on the Pink Planet’s floor. The scientists found that the quantity of daylight that penetrates the water ice may very well be sufficient for photosynthesis to happen within the shallow swimming pools of meltwater beneath the floor of that ice.
A month later, a examine by researchers at Harvard’s Paleomagnetics Lab revealed that Mars’ magnetic subject, which might have supported life, could have lasted for much longer than beforehand thought.
Whereas Mars is now chilly, barren and rocky, proof means that the magnetic subject could have lasted till 3.9 billion years in the past, in contrast with earlier estimates of 4.1 billion years — making the Pink Planet a chief candidate for a thriving atmosphere for all times.
The additional 200 million years overlap with the period when the Martian floor grew to become lined with water, the proof for which has been gathered by a number of rovers despatched by NASA.
