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Every morning during the warmer months in the southern part of the Red Planet, an exceptionally long cloud appears over a Martian volcano. The cloud of water ice, which appears close to the Arsia Mons volcano, stretches out over a thousand kilometers before dissipating within hours of forming. Oddly enough, the Arsia Mons is the only volcano in that area that possesses such an unusual cloud on a daily basis. And now, based on observations conducted by the Visual Monitoring Camera (also known as VMC and the “Mars Webcam”) on ESA’s Mars Express, researchers have been able to solve the mys...
Mars Express and the case of the large, mysterious Martian volcano cloud April 21, 2021 Throughout the southern Martian hemisphere’s spring and summer seasons, a large, expansive cloud emerges daily from the volcano Arsia Mons. Why this cloud only forms at this location on Mars, what kind of cloud it is, and other puzzles to this phenomenon have plagued researchers for years — as observing Martian weather usually only happens by accident during other investigations. Now, a team of researchers primarily using the Mars Express orbiter from the European Space Agency (ESA) — as well as da...
Mars Exploration Fast Facts Here’s some background information about Mars exploration. The United States and the Soviet Union are the only two countries to land a spacecraft on Mars. Facts There have been nine successful US Mars landings: Viking 1 and Viking 2 (both 1976), Pathfinder (1997), Spirit and Opportunity (both 2004), Phoenix (2008), Curiosity (2012), InSight (2018) and Perseverance (2021). The only other country to land a spacecraft on Mars was the Soviet Union in 1971 and 1973. The United States, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India have successfully sent spacecr...
Scientists unravel mystery of 1,100-mile-long cloud forming above Martian volcanoes It's similar to how these clouds form on Earth only on a massive scale. The cloud is about 1,118 miles (1,800 kilometers) long and 93 miles (150 km) across. Credit: ESA. Every year around Mars’ southern solstice, a strange elongated ice cloud forms over the red planet’s surface. The exact nature of this peculiar meteorological phenomenon has been elusive — until recently. Scientists affiliated with the European Space Agency (ESA) just released a stunning photo of the giant 1,100-mile-long (1,800 km) c...