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The Mars Express spacecraft celebrates 15 years of service in the Martian orbit with the receipt of beautiful and detailed photos of the Korolev crater, filled with ice water.
The Mars Express spacecraft, whose mission is to study Mars, was launched on June 2, 2003 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He hit Mars on December 25, 2003 and has been touring around the planet ever since. In addition to investigating Mars, the device has collected many valuable data on Phobos, one of the planet's two natural satellites.
Korolev on Mars
According to scientists, the device would play a major role in the search for a great riddle of Mars. – Where are the huge water reserves of the planet. Nowadays, astronomers consider that there are rivers, lakes and even entire oceans on the Martian surface with as much liquid as our Arctic Ocean.
Most of this water then evaporated in space with the red planet 's atmosphere. Only a portion has been conserved in ice deposits and large underground ice deposits in the recently discovered polar and temperate latitudes by the MRO and Mars Express probes.
These water reserves melt periodically, evaporate and are replaced by others in the coldest regions of the planet. It is a kind of "hydrological cycle" that arouses great interest from scientists in that it can contribute to a "leakage" on the planet or be the main source of microbes that live in the layers. deep of Mars.
According to researchers, the ice is just in the crater of Korolev, an 82-kilometer trough in the vicinity of the North Pole that appeared about four billion years ago, while it was not found at all. There was still no water on the planet.
reaches two kilometers in the coldest times of the year. The researchers say that these water reserves are preserved thanks to the sudden change of temperature between the cold bottom of the crater and the hottest surface rocks.
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