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The Coming and Going of Ice on Mars

Knobby, pitted terrain on Mars surface
This image of the knobby, pitted terrain of Solis Planum — a huge mound south of the Mars canyon system Valles Marineris – was acquired by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Aug. 16, 2015, at 2:47 p.m. local Mars time.

This image of Solis Planum — a huge mound south of the Mars canyon system Valles Marineris – was acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Aug. 16, 2015, at 2:47 p.m. local Mars time.

Like Earth’s water table, Mars has an ice table. Sometimes, the ice table coincides with the ground’s surface as it does here. The knobby, pitted terrain is caused when ice is deposited and then sublimates over and over again. This geologic process is called “accrescence” and “decrescence” and also occurs on Neptune’s moon Triton and on Pluto, though in the outer solar system the ice is not water ice. Other evidence for ice here includes the rope-like, curved flow feature that resembles glacial flow.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Caption: Kirby Runyon