Jakarta, Indonesia Sentinel — While Earth celebrates the New Year amid winter chills, Mars welcomes the arrival of spring, a season unlike anything experienced on our home planet. As temperatures rise, the Red Planet undergoes dramatic and explosive transformations.
Mars officially began its new year on November 12, 2024, completing another 687-Earth-day orbit around the Sun. But while spring on Earth brings melting snow and blooming flowers, springtime on Mars arrives with sudden, violent changes.
“Springtime on Earth has lots of trickling as water ice gradually melts. But on Mars, everything happens with a bang,“ said Serina Diniega, a planetary surface researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), as reported by Earth.com.
Unlike Earth, Mars’ thin atmosphere cannot support liquid water. Instead, ice sublimates directly into gas, triggering spectacular phenomena. From roaring avalanches to towering gas geysers, all meticulously observed by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
According to Earth.com, here’s the highlight of phenomenon happened on Mars during its springtime, as the human welcoming a new year on Earth.
Avalanches Roar Down Martian Cliffs
As spring sunlight begins to warm the Martian surface, cliffs burst to life with cascading frost avalanches. In 2015, NASA’s HiRISE camera aboard the MRO captured a striking image of a 66-foot-wide chunk of frozen carbon dioxide crashing down a cliffside.
These avalanches provide scientists with valuable insights into Mars’ shifting landscapes and the forces shaping its surface.
“We’re lucky we’ve had a spacecraft like MRO observing Mars for as long as it has,” Diniega said. “Watching for almost 20 years has let us catch dramatic moments like these avalanches.“
Explosive Gas Geysers Create Alien Patterns
When sunlight penetrates layers of frozen carbon dioxide on Mars, the trapped ice sublimates into gas. This gas builds pressure until it erupts violently through the surface, creating towering geysers that spray dark fans of sand and dust across the landscape.
These dark fans are visible across Mars, but the most striking examples typically appear during southern spring, which begins in December 2025.
Spider-Like Scars on the Martian Surface
One of the most peculiar springtime phenomena on Mars is the formation of araneiforms—spider-like patterns etched into the planet’s surface.
As sunlight heats translucent layers of frozen carbon dioxide, the sublimating gas creates pressure beneath the ice. Eventually, the gas escapes in violent bursts, carving branching patterns into the ground that resemble giant spider legs.
These intricate formations remain long after the ice has vanished, offering scientists clues about seasonal surface activity on Mars.
Spring Winds Shape Mars’ Northern Ice Cap
Mars’ north pole, home to an ice cap roughly the size of Texas, experiences intense spring winds that carve deep spiral troughs into the icy terrain.
The winds accelerate through these troughs, reshaping the ice through an adiabatic process—where changes in air temperature and pressure occur without adding or removing energy.
This same process drives Earth’s Santa Ana and Chinook winds, but on Mars, the scale and intensity are far greater.
Isaac Smith, a planetary scientist at York University in Toronto, sates that the scale of this phenomenon was enormous, and cannot be compared to similar occurrence on earth. “You can find similar troughs in Antarctica but nothing at this scale.”
Sand Dunes on the Move
During winter, frozen carbon dioxide locks sand dunes in place. But as spring sunlight sublimates the frozen gas, the dunes are freed to resume their slow migration across the planet’s surface. This gradual yet persistent movement highlights how seasonal changes reshape Mars arid landscapes over time.
A World of Ice, Fire, and Constant Change
No two Martian springs are ever exactly the same. Slight variations in temperature and sublimation rates influence the speed and intensity of these dramatic phenomena.
For nearly two decades, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, managed by JPL, has been at the forefront of documenting these transformations. Equipped with advanced sensors like the HiRISE camera, the spacecraft has offered scientists an unprecedented window into the red planet’s seasonal rhythms.
Read also : ‘Alien Message’ Sent From Mars in 2023 Finally Decoded After a Year
From thundering avalanches and explosive geysers to spider-like scars and wandering dunes, spring on Mars is a season of dramatic phenomenon, a glimpse into the dynamic nature of our solar system’s fourth planet.
(Raidi/Agung)
