Water ice in crater at Martian north pole

Perspective view of crater with water ice - looking east. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

This image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole.

The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 1343 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel. The unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’s far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East.

The crater is 35 kilometres wide and has a maximum depth of approximately 2 kilometres beneath the crater rim. The circular patch of bright material located at the centre of the crater is residual water ice.

This white patch is present all year round, as the temperature and pressure are not high enough to allow sublimation of water ice.

It cannot be frozen carbon dioxide since carbon dioxide ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap at the time the image was taken (late summer in the Martian northern hemisphere).

There is a height difference of 200 metres between the crater floor and the surface of this bright material, which cannot be attributed solely to water ice.

It is probably mostly due to a large dune field lying beneath this ice layer. Indeed, some of these dunes are exposed at the easternmost edge of the ice.

Faint traces of water ice are also visible along the rim of the crater and on the crater walls. The absence of ice along the north-west rim and walls may occur because this area receives more sunlight due to the Sun’s orientation, as highlighted in the perspective view.

The colour images were processed using the HRSC nadir (vertical view) and three colour channels. The perspective views were calculated from the digital terrain model derived from the stereo channels.

The 3D anaglyph images were created from the nadir channel and one of the stereo channels. Stereoscopic glasses are needed to view the 3D images Image resolution has been decreased for use on the internet.

Media Contact

Monica Talevi alfa

All latest news from the category: Physics and Astronomy

This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.

innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors