[ad_1]
NASA shared an image Thursday showing multi-legged shapes covering the South Pole of Mars – but "spiders" are less scary (and less musically inclined) than you think.
The image actually shows radiant mounds according to NASA, form each Martian spring when the sun begins to heat up the frozen carbon dioxide (known on Earth as dry ice) that forms the southern ice cap. the planet. When the carbon dioxide heats up, it goes from its solid state to a gas – but it seems to melt from bottom to top, so the gas stays trapped below the surface.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune Technology Newsletter
When carbon dioxide expands, the mounting pressure eventually cracks on the surface, creating Venous "spider" formations on Mars. "aranei" is a way of saying "spider" because "aranei" is Latin for "spider". Dark spots in the image, in turn, are formed by dust deposited around the vents where the CO2 bursts.
The image was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on May 13 this year using the high-resolution Imaging Science Experiment telescopic camera, or HiRISE. HiRise was built by Ball Aerospace, and has a resolution to recognize objects as small as 3 feet. It was launched in 2005.
The fact that so much ice on Mars is formed of carbon dioxide rather than water is only one of the challenges facing the plans of colonization of the red planet. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, however, has already discovered evidence of thin layers of water ice that exist beneath the surface of about one third of the planet, and could be easily accessed by astronauts in some places.
Source link
