It's snowing on Mars

or at least in the sky above it. This is just one extraordinary piece of information being sent back to us by the landers, probes and rovers scanning the planet. Home to the largest mountain in the solar system and a canyon as long as the US is wide, it is a world as fantastic as any imagined by JG Ballard

High in the sky above Mars, it is snowing right now. Very gently snowing. The snow does not settle on the rubble-strewn land below - not these days, anyway - but instead vaporises into the thin atmosphere long before it reaches the ground.
The first flakes of snow, on a planet that until fairly recently was believed to be waterless, were spotted just a few months ago. A Nasa lander near the planet's north pole was scanning the sky with a laser when it noticed the telltale signs of snowfall. The probe, called Phoenix, announced the news in a radio signal that was picked up by an overhead orbiter and beamed back to Earth. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

The news of snow falling is just one piece of an extraordinary wealth of information that has recently been sent back from Mars by orbiters, landers and rovers. Together, they have mapped the surface in unprecedented detail, cracked open rocks, sniffed the atmosphere and dug down into the soil. What they have found points to an unimagined Martian history, one where life may have once gained a foothold and may even cling on still in the frigid soils of the permafrost.


click here to read more-> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/27/mars-snow-space-technology-nasa




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4357217/Mars-facts-revealed-by-Nasas-Rovers.html

For two years Nasa's Rovers have been exploring the surface of Mars, potentially paving the way for a human voyage to the Red Planet
Image taken from the Mars Rover. For two years Nasa's Rovers have been exploring the surface of Mars, potentially paving the way for a human voyage to the Red Planet. Photo: AP
For two years Nasa's Rovers have been exploring the surface of Mars, potentially paving the way for a human voyage to the Red Planet
A promontory nicknamed "Cape Verde" can be seen jutting out from the walls of Victoria Crater in this approximate false-color picture taken by the panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover. Photo: AP
For two years Nasa's Rovers have been exploring the surface of Mars, potentially paving the way for a human voyage to the Red Planet
This false-color rendering shows the scene acquired by NASA's Spirit rover on martian day, or sol, 454 (April 13, 2005), using its panoramic camera. In the background is Clark Hill. Photo: AP
For two years Nasa's Rovers have been exploring the surface of Mars, potentially paving the way for a human voyage to the Red Planet
Taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera, this photograph shows a flaky rock called Mimi. Photo: AP

* Scraping soil revealed patches of ice that quickly evaporated.
* Soil in the planet's arctic circle contains calcium carbonate, which usually forms in the presence of water.
* A substance called perchlorate was found in soil. Some microbes on Earth use perchlorate as a source of energy
* It snows in the upper atmosphere but vaporises before reaching the ground.
* Life could exist in the frozen permafrost.
* Spirit and Opportunity, two rovers sent by NASA five years ago, have sent back 250,000 pictures from Mars and 36 gigabytes of scientific data.
* Sedimentary deposits may have formed from ancient lakes.
* Spirit landed in an old volcano with soil rich in sulphate and opal deposits.
* In 2006 the Mars Global Surveyor identified stains that appeared to be caused by gushing water on a gully wall.
* Five million years ago the Martian atmosphere could have been thick with ice clouds.