Scientists Stunned After Discovering Water Frost on Mars’s Tallest Volcanoes

Latest Discovery— Water Frost on Mars’s Highest Volcanoes

A new study found water frost on the tops of Mars' volcanoes near the equator for the first time. Researchers from the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB) detailed their findings in a recent paper published in Nature Geoscience. This discovery shed light on Mars' complex weather and geological processes, which transformed our basic understanding of its climate. Following this revelation, scientists were intrigued and actively explored further to uncover more about Mars and its planetary secrets.

Groundbreaking Discovery

The published study revealed that winter frost often covered large areas of Mars’ Tharsis region, marking the first time water had been seen at the planet’s equator. The frost was very thin—thinner than a human hair—but covered such a large area. Researchers explained that this frost formed because the volcanoes had large depressions at their tops, called calderas, which had been created when magma chambers emptied during past eruptions. Co-author Nicolas Thomas, Principal Investigator of TGO’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) and Adomas’s PhD supervisor at the University of Bern shared with the BBC , "Winds traveled up the slopes of the mountains, bringing relatively moist air from near the surface up to higher altitudes, where it condensed and settled as frost."

Implications for Martian Climate

For a long time, scientists believed that Mars' equator was too hot and its atmosphere too thin for ice to form. Knewz.com noted that this recent discovery suggested a more complex water cycle with changing temperatures and atmospheric conditions that allowed water to turn into frost. Adomas Valantinas, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, told The Guardian’s Ian Sample, "What we were seeing could have been a trace of a past Martian climate. It might have been related to atmospheric climate processes that were active earlier in Martian history, maybe millions of years ago."

Mars's Tallest Volcano— Olympus Mons

Olympus Mons was a colossal volcano located in the Tharsis Montes region near Mars’ equator and recognized as the tallest volcano in the solar system. It had a diameter of about 600 kilometers (373 miles) and rose approximately 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) above the surrounding plains. The volcano’s height was nearly three times that of Mount Everest, which was due to Mars’ lower gravity and the fact that the planet’s surface didn’t move like Earth’s. This allowed the volcano to expand without shifting. Jacob Bleacher, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, told Space.com , "On Earth, the Hawaiian islands were built from volcanoes that erupted as the Earth’s crust slid over a hot spot—a plume of rising magma. Our research raised the possibility that the opposite happened on Mars; a plume might have moved beneath the stationary crust."

Potential for Future Exploration of Mars

John Bridges, a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, shared with CNN , "This paper was a fantastic use of the CaSSIS camera on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which captured both visible color and infrared light reflected from the Martian surface." He added, "If the frost on these volcanoes was confirmed to be water (and not carbon dioxide), it would have been surprising." Mars' water cycle hadn’t been as active as it was billions of years ago, making it tough to track water movement. Additionally, J. Taylor Perron, a professor at MIT, raised the question of where the water vapor for the frost came from—whether it was from the volcanoes, even though they were inactive, or from somewhere else, like the polar ice caps.