New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: In what could explain a lot of mysteries about the red planet, scientists have discovered an ice crater in Mars’ north pole that could potentially be a source of water and life on the planet.
In a video posted on June 30, the European Space Agency (ESA) showed a crater 1.8 km deep and 82 km wide which is likely to be a source of water on Mars and can help future humans to colonise the red planet.
The crater, which is known as ‘Korolev crater’, is located in the northern lowlands of Mars. It had been named after Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev who was known as the “father of Russian space technology”.
According to ESA, the Korolev crater, located in the northern lowlands of the Mars and south of the large Olympia Undae dune field that partly surrounds the red planet’s north polar cap, “is filled with ice round the year and is stable”.
“Water ice is permanently stable within Korolev crater because the deepest part of this depression acts as a natural cold trap. The air above the ice cools and is thus heavier compared to the surrounding air: since air is a poor conductor of heat, the water ice mound is effectively shielded from heating and sublimation,” the European Space Agency said in a statement.
The ESA, however, believes that the ice could not be frozen carbon dioxide as the had already disappeared from the north polar cap at the time the image was taken (late summer in the Martian northern hemisphere).
The ESA has also released a video of the crater. However, it is not the recorded video but is created from combined scans of the surface of the red planet which was collected by from Mars’ Express probe’s onboard high-resolution stereo camera.
Take a look at the video here:
“The colour images were processed using the HRSC nadir (vertical view) and three colour channels. The perspective views were calculated from the digital terrain model derived from the stereo channels,” the ESA said on its website.
ESA believes that the crater could help it to reveal a lot of mysteries about Mars and can develop interest among people about colonising the red planet.