If the frozen carbon dioxide has melted in the summer, distinctive marks are revealed on the Mars landscape. It is known as ‘Araneidoform site’ because it looks like spiders when seen from space. Some of these spider -like landforms are more than a kilometer across, and some have hundreds of legs. It occurs regularly in flocks. The image above was taken by the Mars scouting track when he looked at the Southern Hemisphere in 2009.
The processes that create these spider formations are not fully understood, although JPL works to mimic the temperature and pressure of Mars to create it again.
The arrival of spring on Mars also brings strong winds, and it is believed that the distinctive spiral pattern of Mars’ North polish was created over many years by winds blowing from the middle middle to its periphery. The spiral pattern is due to the Coriolis effect, and that is when the rotation of a planet bends the winds.
The darker parts of the spiral are actually deep canyons, cut by the spring winds over a long period. The Chasma boreal, which is visible to the right of the middle of the ice cap in the image, is especially spectacular. It’s as long as the Grand Canyon (about 450 kilometers) and up to 2 kilometers deep.
The strong spring winds also move sand dunes on the march surface, just like winds in deserts on earth.
The white stuff you see on the image is ripe around the increased dunes, which remain static while frozen. If the temperature rises in the spring and this ice melts, the dunes will start to move again due to the operation’s operation.
“As we have seen, the start of spring on Mars is very active. You can even say ‘explosive’, says Diniega. “I can imagine it would be very noisy, with things cracking and exploding.”
This story originally appears on Wired Japan and was translated from Japanese.