The Mars Orbiter captures a winter wonderland on Mars in summer

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas – on Mars. Otherworldly landscapes are, for the most part, a distinct red color, but recent images reveal unusual frosty features that have turned the planet’s red south pole white.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft has captured stunning views of a winter wonderland on Mars, but this isn’t your usual snowfall. Instead, Mars’ south pole is covered in layers of carbon dioxide ice and dust European Space Agencycreating an enchanting scene across the planet’s southern region of Australe Scopuli.

Winter on Mars sees temperatures drop to -190°F (-123°C). Although it is cold, Mars never gets more than a few feet of snow. Unlike snow on Earth, Martian snow comes in two flavors: water ice and carbon dioxide, or dry ice. On the one hand, water ice turns into gas before it touches the surface, due to the planet’s thin atmosphere; Dry ice, on the other hand, reaches the surface.

Although it looks like a winter wonderland, the images were taken in June, when it was almost summer time at Mars’ south pole. According to the European Space Agency He releasesThe warm sun’s rays cause the seasonal ice layers to begin to retreat, which is clearly visible on the left side of the image where dark spots appear.

When sunlight shines through the translucent upper layers of dry ice, the ice below sublimates—turns into steam directly from the solid state—and creates pockets of trapped gas. The pressure builds until the layers of ice above begin to crack, causing jets of gas to explode across the surface, carrying dark dust from below. After the dust blows its way through, it returns to the surface in a fan-shaped pattern directed by the wind.

In the above view of the seasonal ice caps of Australe Scopuli, layers of ice and dust overlap in a swirling dream across the surface of Mars. The image was captured by a high-resolution stereo camera on Mars Express, allowing the scene’s topography to be extracted from a digital terrain model. The image provides a closer look at the fan-shaped pattern created by bursts of dust, creating boundaries between layered sediments.

Launched in 2003, ESA’s Mars Express rover has provided stunning images of the Martian landscape for more than 20 years. The spacecraft has compiled the most complete map of the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere, observed the planet’s moons Phobos and Deimos in detail, and traced the history of water across Mars. According to the European Space Agency. The mission also carried a lander called Beagle 2, but it was… Lost on arrival No scientific operations have been conducted on the red (or white) planet, it seems.