NASA rover captures images of mysterious “mother-of-pearl” clouds above Mars
New images captured by NASA Curious Wanderer Show colorful clouds in the sky on Mars.
These images were captured by the Mastcam of the rover, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory compared to the eyes of the wanderer. Clouds were discovered on January 17 and took photos within 16 minutes Said in the press release.
Clouds are called luminous or twilight clouds and contain frozen carbon dioxide or dry ice. When the sunset scatters light, they will have color. This color leads them to be nicknamed “Mother of Pearl” clouds.
Although the atmosphere of Mars is 95% CO2, few of its clouds have an atmosphere high enough and a temperature low enough to contain frozen CO2. Most clouds on Earth are made of water ice. The clouds photographed by curiosity are located at an altitude of 37 to 50 miles above the planet’s surface. Other images show clouds as white plumes fall in the atmosphere and then evaporate about 31 miles above Mars.
Twilight clouds are only found in certain areas of the southern hemisphere of Mars. NASA’s Perseverance roverIt has landed in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2021 and has not seen clouds since its landing, but curiosity has seen them in the southern hemisphere during four different Martian periods.
Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist at the Boulder Space Science Institute, Colorado, told NASA that he believes some parts of the planet are more likely to form clouds. He said gravity waves can cool the planet’s atmosphere, which may be a factor.
“Carbon dioxide is not expected to condense into ice here, so something is cooling it to the point that it may happen,” Lemmon said in a NASA press release. “But the Martian gravity wave is not fully understood yet, and we are not sure what it is.” Causes twilight clouds to form in one place rather than another.”
Even if researchers do not fully understand how clouds are formed, they can predict when and when they appear. Lemmon, a leading researcher on paper in 2024, detailed the first two years of Curiosity Cloud Observation, said the phenomenon “has become so predictable that we can plan the lens ahead of time. .”
New cloud photos are not the only data curiosity It has been sent back to NASA in recent weeks. The Space Agency said the rover recently investigated a place called the Gediz Vallis channel.
It also visited a crater nicknamed “Rural Canyon” to take pictures and study the rocks around the crater. NASA said the 67-foot-wide crater may have formed millions of years ago, depending on the erosion at the site.
The rover will continue to enter a new location that includes what NASA calls “boxing,” or cracks in the Earth’s surface in groundwater. NASA says the cracks look like giant spider webs when viewed from space.
