Snow on Mars: NASA spacecraft spots 'dry ice' snowflakes

Cebu : Philippines | Sep 17, 2012 at 11:44 PM PDT

By skooter

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Skooter reporting 09/18/12

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), a spacecraft orbiting Mars has spotted carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, turning Mars the only body in the solar system known to host this strange weather occurrence.

The snow on Mars or snowflakes are smaller than its counterpart on Earth, as small as the human red blood cell and fell from clouds around the planet's south pole during the Martian winter spanning 2006 and 2007. The Martian south pole hosts a frozen carbon dioxide or "dry ice" cap year-round, and the new findings may help explain how it formed and carry on, researchers said.

Lead author Paul Hayne of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. said that these are the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds They definitely determined the clouds are composed of carbon dioxide, flakes of Martian air, and they are thick enough to result in snowfall buildup at the surface.

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NASA Finds 'Snow' on Mars

FoxNews

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Researchers have calculated that carbon dioxide snow particles on Mars are roughly the size of a human red blood cell. Martian snow is depicted in this artist's rendering as a mist or fog that eventually settles to the surface

skooter is based in Cebu, Central Visayas, Philippines, and is an Anchor for Allvoices.

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