Frost found on volcanoes near Mars equator for first time in major breakthrough

Morning frost has been spotted on volcanoes near Mars’ equator for the first time, a part of the planet where it was thought impossible for water frost to exist.

The “astonishing” discovery confirms that ice is not only confined to the red planet’s poles, but suggests there is more water ice across the planet than previously thought.

The frost sits on top of the Tharsis volcanoes – the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System.

It was first seen by the European Space Agency’s (Esa) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), and later by both another instruments aboard TGO and Esa’s Mars Express.

Lead author Adomas Valantinas made the discovery as a PhD student at University of Bern, Switzerland, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, USA.

Valantinas said: “We thought it was impossible for frost to form around Mars’s equator, as the mix of sunshine and thin atmosphere keeps temperatures relatively high at both surface and mountaintop – unlike what we see on Earth, where you might expect to see frosty peaks.”

The newly discovered patches of frost are present for a few hours around sunrise before they evaporate in sunlight.

Despite being as thin as a human hair, they cover a vast area.

Esa suggests that the amount of frost represents about 150,000 tonnes of water swapping between surface and atmosphere each day during the cold seasons, the equivalent of roughly 60 Olympic swimming pools.

There are a number of possible for why the frost had not been spotted until now.

These include the orbit needing to line up in the right position in order for the area to be observed in the early morning, and another is needing to know where and when to look for the frost.

Dr Minjae Kim, research fellow, Department of Physics, University of Warwick, said the ice deposits must have formed during Mars’s ancient past when climatic conditions were “starkly different”.

Dr Kim said the findings represent a major breakthrough and the “massive discoveries fundamentally reshape our understanding of Mars’s climatic history”.

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