Astronomers have discovered for the first time evidence of water ice near the summit and upper slopes of Mount Olympus, as well as other large Martian volcanoes from the tropical Tharsis Plateau.
The information office of Brown University indicates that the presence of this ice made scientists question the exceptional “dryness” of the tropical regions of Mars.
Adomas Valentinas, a researcher at the university, says: “We thought that water ice could not form on the mountaintops near the equator of Mars because the temperatures there are very high during the day due to the low density of the planet’s atmosphere and the high level of solar illumination, but it seems that these ice reserves "They formed here since the climate of Mars was different and rain could have fallen on the tops of these volcanoes."
Astronomers made this discovery while studying images of the largest volcanoes on Mars, including Olympus, Arsia and Mount Ascaria, which they recently obtained using the cameras of the European Mars Express mission and the Russian-European probe ExoMars-TGO.
Scientists indicate that the reason for interest in these volcanoes is the discovery of water clouds carrying large amounts of moisture near them on the Tharsis Plateau.
Subsequent study of the spectrum of these deposits using ExoMars-TGO instruments showed that they consist of water ice or other forms of solid water deposits and appear periodically around 07:00 Martian time and disappear the following hour. As a rule, such deposits of frozen water were present on the peaks and slopes of Olympus, Arsia and other volcanoes only in the winter, autumn and spring months, but they were completely absent in the Martian summer.
Nice discovery.
ReplyDelete