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There were a couple of interesting articles recently posted about the latest Mars mission, the Mars Global Surveyor.
The first was about the Martian polar region, and the second was about the planet's atmosphere.
Mars Picture Shows Pink Pole
The picture beamed back to Earth from the Mars Global Surveyor
on Sept. 12 shows the planet's Northern Hemisphere in early spring,
pink frost poking through bluish-white, wispy clouds.
According to NASA, the picture was a color-composite.
At the top of the photo is the North Pole, which scientists believe
is composed of dust and ice deposited over millions of years.
The swirled patterns are caused mostly by channels eroded into
the dusty ice.
The frost in the photo appears pink rather than white, possibly
because a small amount of reddish Martian dust is mixed in with
it, NASA says.
Dark sand dunes surround the ice cap. NASA expects that when the
Global Surveyor's camera takes the next round of photos in March,
the dunes will show even darker as the seasonal ice melts.
The $250 million Mars Global Surveyor, launched on Nov. 7, 1996,
began orbiting the planet in September 1997. It was designed to
map Martian terrain for a Martian year, equivalent to 687 Earth
days, beginning in 1998.
The mapping mission has been pushed back to 1999 because of a
solar panel problem and could be further delayed by concerns about
the spacecraft's communications antenna.
By Discovery Channel Online News: http://www.discovery.com
Mars a place of violent winds and floods, researchers find
October 13, 1998
CNN.com (Associated Press Story)
Web posted at 12:07 PM ET
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- The rock and soil of Mars bear evidence
that the red planet is a far more violent place than Earth, with
storm winds gusting to 350 mph and powerful floods that once erupted
across vast areas.
"Mars is a small planet that does things in a very big way," John Pearl of Goddard Space Flight Center said at a meeting Monday of the planetary division of the American Astronomical Society.
Photos from the Mars Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting the planet for 13 months, show that Mars is scoured by high-speed winds in storms that cover virtually an entire side of the planet, and that flood waters have exploded out of dammed up craters at speeds of more than 100 mph.
"The floods could have lasted for months," said Michael C. Malin, a research scientist on the Mars Observer team who analyzed one such flood. The water flow, he said, was 1,000 times greater than floods that have struck the U.S. Midwest in recent years.
The waters poured out of a high crater that towers over nearby flat plains and churned across the planet's surface, rolling huge boulders and carving canyons in a matter of weeks. Eventually, the water slowed and spread out into a flat basin and turned into a mud flow.
Malin said the water then either evaporated into the dry Martian atmosphere or seeped back into the soil.
The water may have been the result of a massive impact from an asteroid.
Malin speculated that an impact smashed far beneath the surface and created a large crater with raised sides. Subsurface water flowed into the crater, eventually creating a lake that he estimated to be 1,600 feet deep and the size of the state of Utah.
When the sides of the crater eroded away, the water was released in one massive spill and began flowing in 300-foot-deep cascades traveling at about 130 mph. Satellite instruments monitoring a Martian storm clocked winds that raged at 360 mph -- almost five times stronger than a minimum hurricane on Earth said Pearl.
He said the satellite observed one storm from start to finish. In just 36 hours, said Pearl, a small disturbance covering about 60 square miles grew to a monster covering more than 1,000 miles.
"It was like a small storm that grew up to cover all of the western United States," said Pearl.
It is the dust in the Mars atmosphere that may make its storms so violent, he said. The suspended particles capture sunlight and heat up rapidly, rising by about 20 degrees just after sunrise. The captured heat sets off a vortex of moving air that grows and grows until it dwarfs an earthly hurricane.
Other photos have captured dust devils like those frequently seen
in American deserts. These whirling disturbances suck up dust
and carry it high into the air. Though the dust devils lack the
great violence, they help keep the Mars atmosphere filled with
the red dust that absorbs sunlight and helps to energize the major
storms.
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