Giant Disk of Water Ice Found on Mars |
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Written by spacetravel.org
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Saturday, 30 July 2005 22:34 |
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On July 28, 2005, the European Space agency released images of a disk of water ice, eight miles in diameter, near Mars north pole.
The ice disk lies at the center of an impact crater, 24 miles in diameter and 1 to 3 miles deep, on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers most of Mars far northern latitudes. The ice is present year-round, because the temperature and atmospheric pressure are not high enough for it to melt. Faint traces of water ice can also be seen along the craters walls and rim.
The images, which were taken by the high-resolution cameras on board the Mars Express probe, cannot be photographs of frozen carbon dioxide because they were taken during the late Martian summer, by which time all carbon dioxide ice has evaporated.
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