Frost covers the interior of volcanoes in the Tharsis region of Mars, an international research team at Brown University has discovered, based on images from the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter research satellite. Scientists calculate that there may be enough water in the area to fill about 150,000 tons, or sixty swimming pools. This discovery was also confirmed by instruments of the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.
The Tharsis region is a prominent continent-sized volcanic plateau near the Martian equator, and is home to the largest volcanic mountains not only on the planet, but in the solar system. Mount Olympus is 21 kilometers high, which is two and a half times the height of Mount Everest. The successive volcanoes Arsia Mons, Pavonis and Mons Ascarios have heights of 11, 8 and 15 km.
On the other hand, this discovery is important because water is a very important raw material for space exploration. On the other hand, Mars is a very dry planet, as the presence of water around the poles has so far been discovered, and its occurrence around the equatorial region is not considered possible.
We didn't think frost formation was likely because the thin atmosphere and sunlight keep daytime temperatures relatively high at the peaks and at the surface – unlike on Earth where we see the tops of icebergs.
said Adomas Valantinas, a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University. He added: “What we see is the remnants of an ancient atmospheric cycle on modern Mars, where there was rain and even snow on these volcanoes in the past.”
In order to find the ice, they either had to be very lucky, or they had to know what they were looking for. The reality was somewhere between the two: according to Valentinas, they were looking for traces of water around the equator in orbital probe images, and that's how they found the volcanoes.
Image: European Space Agency/Deutsche Aerospace Center/Vu University Berlin (A. Valentinas
According to the study, ice appears in the caldera in the volcano's crater in the early hours of the morning and evaporates after sunrise. It forms a thin layer of hair and appears in relatively large areas. According to researchers, a microclimate linked to the water cycle prevails in these areas.
The discovery is based on 30,000 color stereo images from the European Mars Express spacecraft, as well as recordings from the spectrometer on board the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter – years of comprehensive image analysis that began in 2018.
The meeting of water and volcanic activity is practically a perfect match for the evolution of life. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover also found volcanic rocks in Jezero Crater, where it collected samples. However, the sample return mission did not fit within the budget, so it was postponed until after 2040 instead of the planned 2026.
(Yorick alert!, Space.com website)