Paris, September 23 : Data from ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Mars Express spacecraft has enabled scientists to better explain why Mars’s residual southern ice cap is misplaced, attributing the cause of the mystery to the Martian weather system.
Like Earth, Mars has frozen polar caps, but unlike Earth, these caps are made of carbon dioxide ice as well as water ice.
During the southern hemisphere’s summer, much of the ice cap sublimates, a process in which the ice turns straight back into gas, leaving behind what is known as the residual polar cap.
The problem is that while the winter cap is symmetrical about the South Pole, the residual cap is offset by some three to four degrees.