Mars It is the fourth planet in order of distance from the Sun and the second smallest in the Solar System, after Mercury, and although its nickname of “red planet” has mistakenly associated it with heat at times, it really is a world with cold and in which there is winteras confirmed by her own National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its acronym in English).
According to a report published on the Uno TV website, NASA revealed images of the Martian winter, which show snow formation.
The report explains that the poles of Mars reach extreme temperatures of -123 degrees Celsiusalthough according to the agency “only a few meters of snow are formed and most of which falls on extremely flat areas.”
Interestingly, there are two types of snow on Mars. One formed by water ice and carbon dioxide and the other is dry ice. Both types of snowfall occur because Martian air is thin and temperatures are cold, causing water-frozen snow to sublime, or turn into gas, even before it hits the ground.
Is there snow on all of Mars?
Only the coldest ends of Mars, the poles, witness snow in the Martian winter.
Cameras on orbiting spacecraft cannot see through snowfall, and surface missions cannot survive in the extreme cold. As a result, no images of falling snow have ever been captured.
However, scientists know that there is snow on Mars thanks to some special science instruments, such as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, that you can look through the cloud cover using your Mars Climate Sounder instrument, which detects light at wavelengths imperceptible to the human eye.
Earlier in 2008, the US space agency sent the Phoenix lander about 1,600 kilometers from the north pole of Mars, where it used a laser instrument to detect frozen snow falling to the surface.
