Fringy, science-stuff, maybe fact or fiction?

Cape Saint Vincent, one of the cliffs of the Victoria crater on Mars. Photograph: NASA /Reuters

High in the sky above Mars, it is snowing right now. Very gently snowing. The snow does not settle on the rubble-strewn land below - not these days, anyway - but instead vaporises into the thin atmosphere long before it reaches the ground.

The first flakes of snow, on a planet that until fairly recently was believed to be waterless, were spotted just a few months ago. A Nasa lander near the planet's north pole was scanning the sky with a laser when it noticed the telltale signs of snowfall. The probe, called Phoenix, announced the news in a radio signal that was picked up by an overhead orbiter and beamed back to Earth. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

The news of snow falling is just one piece of an extraordinary wealth of information that has recently been sent back from Mars by orbiters, landers and rovers. Together, they have mapped the surface in unprecedented detail, cracked open rocks, sniffed the atmosphere and dug down into the soil. What they have found points to an unimagined Martian history, one where life may have once gained a foothold and may even cling on still in the frigid soils of the permafrost.

Posted by: NeutronNorman at 10:29 | link | comments (3)

Comments:

#1  31 January 2009 - 14:17

 

Oh wow, Norman. Thank you for this post. I haven't really been paying attention to this kind of news lately, so I hadn't seen this pic or any of them from the Mars research. It's amazing, isn't it??

(Of course there has been life on Mars! Isn't that where you men are from??)

Ladyinthemoon

#2  01 February 2009 - 01:29

 

That even looks like some parts of Earth - guess that shouldn't surprise me, huh?

Anonymous

#3  05 February 2009 - 12:09

 

snow! amazing the discoveries coming from those rovers & such. martian snowflakes... almost sounds like the title of a poem...

one

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