This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Although Mars may have once resembled Earth, the rocky red planet now appears far from hospitable. Still, certain details—such as ice-bound water—pique researchers' curiosity.
As on Earth, ice on Mars contains valuable records of past climate that could reveal whether the planet hosts, or has ever hosted, life. Aside from the poles, where ice is sometimes exposed, most of Mars' ice is buried beneath a dusty surface layer. Dust affects climate by darkening ice, which changes how much sunlight is reflected into space.
A University of Washington study published in npj Space Exploration shows that the north pole of Mars contains less dust than scientists thought. "We know there is water ice in the area surrounding the north pole of Mars, but there has been widespread disagreement as to how dusty that ice is," said Aditya Khuller, a senior research scientist at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory. "If it is dustier, the ice will be darker.
Just like a dark T-shirt in the sun makes you warmer, dusty ice gets warmer and vaporizes faster on Mars." Much of what we know about how Earth's climate has evolved through millennia comes from sampling ice. Scientists drill deep into polar ice to draw out long cylinders that contain a record of the local atmosphere. Like a tree's rings, these records can be dated to ancient periods of Earth's history.
But this is no easy task on Earth. On Mars, it's even more complicated. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated its first successful mission to Mars 50 years ago.
In 2008, the Mars Phoenix mission successfully sampled ice near the north pole, a major triumph after the Polar Lander went missing near the south pole in 1999. The UW researchers used data from the Mars Phoenix mission, combined with observations from orbiting satellites, to complete this study. Several years ago, Khuller discovered a discrepancy in the way researchers were analyzing the physical properties of ice on Mars.
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