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Scientists from ESA and Roscosmos who are studying the frozen waste of the northern polar region of Mars have captured a truly astonishing view: rolling and cracked dunes created by sublimating CO2 gas, creating a truly extraordinary landscape .
Scientists can study the wind regime on the Red Planet and more particularly the direction of the prevailing winds by monitoring the shape of the dunes and their evolution over time.
During Martian winter, a thin layer of CO2 ice covers the surface. Later in the early spring, this CO2 sublimates (turns from a solid into a gas) into steam from the bottom of the ice.
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This traps the CO2 gas beneath the surface ice layer and over the sand, causing cracking and shifting of the landscape, creating unusual dune formations visible on the satellite image.
The landscape is riddled with so-called "barchan" dunes, the crescent-shaped or U-shaped dunes that can be seen on the entire Martian terrain, whose curved spikes point to the wind.
The formation of ridges from the dunes indicates that the secondary winds play a role in the formation of the landscape, information that will inform all future colonization efforts, as we will need to know in which direction the wind blows to build structures. this last. The low gravity environment on Mars allows much higher wind speeds, up to 30 meters per second in some cases during dust storms.
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