NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been orbiting the planet Mars for over 20 years. And in its lifetime, it has spotted frost in the morning on Mars.
“Our first thought was (that) ice could be buried there,” Lucas Lange, a JPL intern said. “Dry ice is plentiful near Mars’ poles, but we were looking closer to the equator of the planet, where it’s generally too warm for dry ice frost to form.”
Scientists at NASA were almost certainly puzzled, but it wasn’t just seen from orbit. Many different Mars landers and rovers had seen the frost in the morning, but by the time the sun was up they disappeared.
And what confused people even more was the fact that they seem to disappear into thin air and then suddenly be there again in the morning. However, most recently scientists discovered something shocking.
The ice does disappear, when the sun comes out and turns the frost into ice clouds! Then when the sun goes down the clouds float down to the surface and turn back into frost!
This data just solved a 45 year old mystery and may help us understand what this “frost” is made out of.