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New Photos of Pluto Show a World More Complex and Beautiful Than Ever

An “over-the-top” complex mix of craters, ice flows, mountains, valleys and apparent dunes coexist on Pluto in the latest amazing images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.

“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of process that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” New Horizons’ principal investigator Alan Stern, from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said in a statement. “If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there.” At Space.com, we combined the new Pluto images into an awesome video.

After a break to send particle, solar-wind and space-dust data back to Earth, the New Horizons spacecraft has resumed sending images snapped during its July 14 flyby of Pluto. The new images released today (Sept. 10) have resolutions of up to 440 yards (400 meters) per pixel, and they show a chaotic hodgepodge of features offering many scientific puzzles. [See more of the new Pluto photos by New Horizons]

This mosaic of the new high-resolution Pluto images shows 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of the dwarf planet’s surface, as taken from 50,000 miles (80,000 km) away during New Horizons’ closest approach.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

There may be dunes, officials said in the statement, adding that nitrogen ice flows travel from mountains down to plains, and a network of valleys seems to be carved by flowing material. Old, cratered terrain and “chaotically” jumbled mountains border new flat, icy planes in the segments scientists have seen.

“The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,” Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, said in the statement. “The randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water-ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.”

Broken, mountainous terrain is visible on the left edge of the flat, icy Sputnik Planum. The mountains might be blocks of water-ice floating in Sputnik Planum’s frozen nitrogen, officials said. The image covers 300 miles (470 km).
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

The flat plains of Sputnik Planum fall within the left side of Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped region first seen in July as New Horizons approached the dwarf planet from afar. It was one of the earliest features spotted on Pluto, and is only now revealed in full detail from 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away.

Along the border of Sputnik Planum are what look like dark, windswept dunes, an unexpected surprise on a world that has too thin an atmosphere for wind, officials said.

The dark ridges in the center of this view, near the bottom of Sputnik Planum, suggest possible windswept dunes. Also visible is old, cratered terrain juxtaposed with new, smooth ground, as well as mountains.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

“Seeing dunes on Pluto — if that is what they are — would be completely wild, because Pluto’s atmosphere today is so thin,” William B. McKinnon, a GGI deputy lead from Washington University, St. Louis, said in the statement. “Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven’t figured out is at work. It’s a head-scratcher.”

Researchers also received more data about Pluto’s atmospheric haze. Imaged as Pluto blocked out the sun, this haze formed a glowing halo from the probe’s perspective. There are more layers than the data initially suggested, and a soft atmospheric glow illuminates the planet’s night side just before sunrise and after sunset.

A processed image of the sun shining through Pluto’s atmosphere (right, unedited version at left) reveals multiple layers of haze.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

“This bonus, twilight view is a wonderful gift that Pluto has handed to us,” John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead also from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said in the statement. “Now we can study geology in terrain that we never expected to see.”

New Horizons continues to send back new images and data from the flyby while pressing onward, now over 43 million miles (63 million km) from Pluto and 3 billion miles (5 billion km) from the Earth.

Friday (Sept. 11), officials will release detailed images of Pluto’s moons, taken during the flyby, that hint at a “tortured” geological past for Charon, officials say. Charon, like Pluto, is proving far more complicated than previously suspected.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Pluto's Chaos Region Explored In New Probe Pics | Video

New imagery from the NASA’s New Horizons’ mission has been processed. High detailed views of the Sputnik Planum and the Chaos region give you the perspective from 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto’s equatorial area.

Credit: NASA/JHPL/SWRI/mash mix: Space.com’s @SteveSpaleta

New Firefly Rocket Engine Passes Big Test, Will Launch Small Satellites

Texas-based Firefly Space Systems, which aims to launch small satellites, has tested its first rocket engine.
Credit: Firefly Space Systems

A company that aims to launch small satellites to orbit has successfully tested its first rocket engine.

Texas-based Firefly Space Systems, which is developing rockets dedicated to getting small spacecraft aloft, has conducted a ground test of its Firefly Rocket Engine Research 1 (FRE-R1), company officials announced today (Sept. 10).

“The successful testing of our first engine represents a quantum step in the technical maturation of our company,” Firefly co-founder and CEO Thomas Markusic said in a statement. “We have demonstrated that our core engine design can reliably start, stop and operate at a steady state without combustion instabilities.”

FRE-R1 is a pathfinder for the engines that will power Firefly Alpha, a two-stage small-satellite launcher the company is developing. FRE-R1 operates using liquid oxygen and a refined form of kerosene known as RP-1, but the basic engine design can accommodate methane instead of RP-1, if desired, Firefly representatives said.

The first stage of Firefly Alpha will incorporate 12 “aerospike” engines arrayed in a ring pattern. Aerospike engines — which are wedge-shaped, without the familiar bell-shaped rocket nozzle — use aerodynamic principles to increase efficiency across the broad range of pressures experienced during flight, Firefly representatives said.

These 12 “FRE-2” engines will provide a total of 125,000 pound-feet of thrust. Firefly Alpha’s upper stage, by contrast, will contain a single “FRE-1” engine that generates 7,000 pound-feet of thrust, company representatives said. (The FRE-1 and FRE-2 engines are variants on the same basic thruster design.)

“Upcoming engine tests will emphasize performance tuning and longer duration ‘mission duty cycle’ runs,” Firefly representatives wrote in the statement. “The first hot-fire tests of the FRE-2 aerospike engine are expected to take place in early 2016.”

Tiny satellites are playing a larger and larger role in spaceflight and space science, with some “cubesats” even scheduled to head to Mars, the moon and other deep-space destinations in the next few years.

Today, such bantam craft must usually hitch rides on large rockets as secondary payloads, but Firefly hopes to change things by offering a dedicated small-sat launcher that provides efficient and relatively low-cost access to space.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Evolution of Video-Game Spaceships Traced in 'Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer's Edition'

This new infographic from Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer’s Edition shows how video-game spaceships have changed over the years.
Credit: Guinness World Records

This awesome new image from the folks behind the Guinness World Records traces the evolution of video-game spaceships, from the simple dots and dashes of “Spacewar!” in 1962 to the hyperrealistic Anaconda craft of “Elite: Dangerous” in 2014.

Fresh from the newly published “Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer’s Edition” — released today (Sept. 10) along with “Guinness World Records 2016” — this “Evolution of Spaceships” feature hits the highlights of galactic transportation and combat through the ages.

The very first video-game shooter also featured the first video-game spaceship: “Spacewar!” players in 1962 faced off in ships titled “The Needle” and “The Wedge” in a game “having less detail than a cave painting,” according to the infographic.

The Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer’s Edition was released on Sept. 10, 2015.
Credit: Guinness World Records

“Spacewar!” took place in the gravity well of a star, but any shots exchanged took a straight path across the screen; there wasn’t enough processing power to send them in a realistic trajectory. It wasn’t until “Asteroids” in 1979 that a video game used real-world physics, faithfully reproduced as the iconic Arrow Ship zapped incoming space rocks to survive.

Since then, there’s been an explosion in virtual spaceships paralleling the explosion of games, each unique in its look, attributes and uses in the game — and the new infographic points out the unusual qualities, strengths and weaknesses of many of the ships.

For instance: “Chrono Trigger” (1995) had the Epoch, a fast-moving ship that did double duty as a time machine, while the USG Ishimura in “Dead Space” (2008) hosted a crew of reanimated corpses for the player to battle.

The Navy Super Titan from “Colony Wars” (1997) acted as the game’s final boss with heavy firepower and shields to be destroyed, and the Terran Batlecruiser in “StarCraft” (1998) could survive a direct nuclear strike. There were at least nine incarnations of the Vic Viper from the shoot-’em-up “Gradius” (1985), and the Anaconda from “Elite: Dangerous” (2014) represents the open galaxy adventure’s most expensive spaceship at 146,969,451 credits.

Looking at more than 50 years of video game spaceship history, only one thing remains constant: A spaceship can fill any video-game niche, but it always spells adventure.

You can learn more about the 2016 Guinness World Records here: www.guinnessworldrecords.com/2016.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Stephen Colbert Says Elon Musk Is Either a Supervillain or a Superhero

SpaceX CEO and entrepreneur Elon Musk was a guest on the second episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” on Sept. 2, 2015.
Credit: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/CBS

Elon Musk appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” last night (Sept. 9) to talk about dropping nuclear bombs on Mars, the future of rocket travel, and a creepy, snakelike robot for electric-car owners.

“Are you sincerely trying to save the world?” Colbert asked Musk early in the interview, which covered a wide range of topics, including Musk’s ideas about settling Mars (which he called a “fixer-upper of a planet”), and what he considered the biggest challenge of the 21st century. You can watch the full interview via CBS here.

Musk replied quietly to Colbert’s question by saying, “I’m trying to do good things, yeah.” Colbert fired back, “You’re trying to do good things and you’re a billionaire. That seems a little bit like either superhero or supervillain. You have to choose one.” [Photos: SpaceX’s Amazing Falcon 9 Reusable Rocket Prototype]

Musk is, among other things, founder and CEO of SpaceX, a private spaceflight company that is scheduled to start transporting astronauts to the International Space Station in 2017. The entrepreneur has been a vocal advocate of not only sending humans to Mars, but of engineering the Red Planet so humans could live on its surface outside of enclosed habitats.

“Mars is a fixer-upper of a planet,” Musk told Colbert. How would humans make the Red Planet easier to live on? First, by warming it up, which Musk said could be achieved either by generating greenhouse gasses to trap heat (the “slow method”), or by dropping thermonuclear weapons near the poles (the “fast method”).

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“You’re a supervillain. That’s what a supervillain does,” Colbert said to Musk. “Superman doesn’t say ‘Drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles!’ That’s Lex Luthor, man.”

The pair discussed SpaceX’s attempts to make reusable rockets, which Musk said would be essential for lowering the cost of spaceflight. The pair watched a clip of a Falcon 9 rocket crashing into a ship during an attempt to recover the rocket after it successfully sent a payload into space. After watching the footage, Musk said he and SpaceX are “feeling sad, but happy at the same time […] because if we could reduce the landing velocity, we could get it to land and stay upright and not explode.”

“That is one of the goals of rockets,” Colbert said. “Not to explode.”

But the late-night talk-show host took a small break from the bantering to express great admiration for the entrepreneur.

“One of the things I like about what you do is that your vision of the future — it’s very hopeful; it is … fixable,” Colbert said. “In the world, there’s so much despair; there’s people throwing up their hands at the problems of the world that can’t be solved. You think we can put our minds to it and actually make it a better place.”

Musk told Colbert that the “most important thing we need to solve this century is sustainable energy.” Musk is CEO of Tesla Motors (Colbert said he owns a Tesla and loves it), CEO of SpaceX and chairman of SolarCity, an energy services company that, among other things, sells solar panel systems for homes.

At one point in the interview, Musk and Colbert watched a video of a snakelike robot built by Tesla Motors that will automatically plug in a Tesla electric car in a garage. But even Musk admitted that the slithery movement of the robot is somewhat disconcerting, saying, “This looks a little wrong.”

Colbert said the bot looked like “the thing that jacks into the back of Neo’s head in “The Matrix.” When Colbert asked, jokingly, if it would attack him in his sleep, Musk had a serious reply: “For the prototype, at least, I would recommend not dropping anything when you’re near it,” he said.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Why Pluto's Big Moon Charon Has a Red Polar Cap

The reddish polar patch on Pluto’s moon Charon is visible in this image, which was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015, from a distance of 289,000 miles (466,000 kilometers).
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

The north pole of Pluto’s big moon Charon likely gets its reddish color from radiation-altered shreds of Pluto’s atmosphere, scientists say.

Charon’s surface is dominated by water ice, and the 750-mile-wide (1,200 kilometers) moon is mostly a solid grayish-white as a result. But Charon also harbors a reddish polar patch, which was discovered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its historic Pluto flyby this past July.

New Horizons found that Pluto’s surface is reddish-brown as well, and that’s no coincidence: The red on both bodies is likely caused by complex compounds called tholins, researchers say. [Destination Pluto: NASA’s New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

On Pluto, the tholins are probably created when galactic cosmic rays and ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun interact with methane on the dwarf planet’s surface and in its atmosphere. Something similar is happening on Charon, and it involves Pluto material as well.

Pluto’s atmosphere, which is composed mainly of nitrogen but also harbors some methane and carbon monoxide, is extremely wispy and extends far out into space. Over the eons, some of this air has escaped and been trapped by Charon’s gravity at the moon’s north pole. (Charon lies quite close to Pluto; in fact, the two orbit a common center of mass and are therefore technically part of a binary system.)

Charon is incredibly cold, with yearly temperatures at the poles ranging from minus 433 to minus 351 degress Fahrenheit (minus 258 to minus 213 degrees Celsius), researchers said. So the Pluto gases that reach the moon’s surface freeze directly into solid form, bypassing the liquid phase.

Reactions involving cosmic rays and UV light then turn much of this material into tholins, which have a lower sublimation temperature and therefore can stay put even when the north pole is in sunlight.

This theory is backed up by laboratory work here on Earth, which has produced tholins in conditions similar to those experienced in the Pluto system, researchers said.

“Charon likely has gradually built up a polar deposit over millions of years as Pluto’s atmosphere slowly escapes, during which time the surface is being irradiated by the sun,” New Horizons team member Carly Howett, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, wrote in a blog post Wednesday (Sept. 9).

Tholins come in a variety of colors, and mission scientists aren’t sure why red variants are favored at Charon, Howett added.

“This is one of the many things I am looking forward to better understanding as we receive more New Horizons data over the next year and analyze it in conjunction with continued laboratory work,” she wrote. “Such an exciting time!”

While New Horizons beamed home some images and measurements shortly after the July 14 flyby, the probe stored the vast majority of its data onboard for later transmission. That relay work began in earnest over the weekend; the entire flyby dataset should by on the ground in about 12 months, mission team members have said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

'Red Dragon' Mars Sample-Return Mission Could Launch by 2022

SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule could be modified to help bring Mars samples back to Earth, some researchers say.
Credit: SpaceX

A mission that uses SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to help bring chunks of Mars rock back to Earth for analysis could launch as early as 2022, researchers say.

This “Red Dragon” project — which remains a concept at the moment, not an approved mission — would grab samples collected by NASA’s 2020 Mars rover and send them rocketing back toward Earth, where researchers could scrutinize the material for possible signs of past Red Planet life.

The sample-return effort would keep costs and complexity down by using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and a modified version of the company’s robotic Dragon cargo capsule, the concept’s developers say. [Images: ‘Red Dragon’ Sample-Return Concept]

Red Dragon is “technically feasible with the use of these emerging commercial technologies, coupled with technologies that already exist,” Andy Gonzales, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said Wednesday (Sept. 9) during a presentation with the space agency’s Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group.

The Red Dragon team has developed the concept independently, without any involvement or endorsement by SpaceX, Gonzales said.

Grabbing Mars samples

Mars is a cold and dry place today, but evidence gathered by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity and other spacecraft suggests that the planet was warmer and wetter, with lots of surface water, billions of years ago. Many scientists therefore believe life may have evolved on ancient Mars.

Searching for signs of past Mars life is a tricky and involved process, so the best and most conclusive results would probably be obtained by trained personnel working in the well-equipped labs of Earth, rather than by a robotic rover or lander operating millions of miles from its handlers, astrobiologists say.

Indeed, the U.S. National Research Council regarded Mars sample-return as the highest-priority big-budget future NASA mission in its 2013 Decadal Survey for planetary science.

NASA aims to grab and cache samples from a potentially habitable environment with its next Mars rover, which is scheduled to blast off in 2020. But the space agency does not yet have a firm plan or timeline for bringing this material back to Earth. [The Search for Life on Mars: A Photo Timeline]

That’s where Red Dragon could come in, Gonzales and his team say.

Concept for ’Red Dragon' Mars Sample-Return Mission

The basic outline of the “Red Dragon” Mars sample-return concept, which would use SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule and Falcon Heavy booster.
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center/Red Dragon Internal Study Team

The researchers have drawn up a plan that uses a modified version of SpaceX’s uncrewed Dragon cargo capsule, which has already flown six resupply missions to the International Space Station for NASA. The Red Dragon variant would include a robotic arm, extra fuel tanks and a central tube that houses a rocket-powered Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV).

Red Dragon would launch toward Mars atop SpaceX’s huge Falcon Heavy rocket, which is scheduled to fly for the first time next year. After a long deep-space journey, the capsule would touch down near the 2020 Mars rover (whose landing site has not yet been chosen).

“Red Dragon can go anywhere the rover can go, as far as landing elevation and terrain,” Gonzales said. “We’re confident we could land in front of the rover and have it drive to us.”

Red Dragon’s robotic arm would then grab a sample from the rover’s onboard cache (assuming the 2020 rover does indeed carry its samples, rather than stash them someplace) and transfer it to a secure containment vessel aboard the ERV, which sits atop the MAV. If something goes wrong during this exchange, Red Dragon can simply scoop up some material from the ground using its arm.

The MAV would then blast off from the center of the capsule, like a missile from a silo, sending the ERV on its way back to Earth. The ERV would settle into orbit around our planet; its sample capsule would then be transferred to, and brought down to Earth by, a separate spacecraft — perhaps another Dragon capsule.

The ERV, meanwhile, would be placed in a sun-circling orbit so it could not contaminate Earth or the moon with stray Mars material.

Mars Myths & Misconceptions: Quiz

No planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.

The original 'Face on Mars' image taken by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter, in grey scale, on July, 25 1976. Image shows a remnant massif located in the Cydonia region.

0 of 10 questions complete

Mars Myths & Misconceptions: Quiz

No planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.

0 of questions complete

Feasible concept?

There’s no reason why this potential mission should not work, Gonzales said.

Even the most eyebrow-raising part of the plan — landing the roughly 10-ton Red Dragon capsule softly on Mars — is feasible without any big technological leaps, he and colleague Larry Lemke, a now-retired former Ames researcher, stressed during the FISO talk.

While Red Dragon is far too heavy for the rocket-powered “sky crane” system that put the 1-ton Curiosity down and will be used again for the 2020 rover, detailed modeling studies suggest that the vehicle could land safely using its onboard SuperDraco thrusters. (These engines will come standard on the crew-carrying Dragon variant SpaceX is developing, as well as newer versions of the cargo Dragon. The SuperDracos’ main purpose is to get the capsule to safety in the event of a launch emergency.)

Red Dragon is too heavy to use parachutes, but it could slow down enough for the SuperDracos to take over by entering the thin Martian atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle, thereby subjecting itself to the effects of drag for a long period of time, Lemke said.

So how much would all of this cost? It’s unclear at the moment, because the team has not yet drawn up any cost estimates. But Gonzales said he’s hopeful that the Red Dragon concept would be considerably cheaper than the Mars sample-return effort envisioned by the 2013 Decadal Survey, which would likely cost around $6 billion.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Gigantic Ice Slab Found on Mars Just Below the Planet's Surface

This image shows a digital terrain model of the crater investigated by the University of Arizona’s Ali Bramson. Image released August 26, 2015.
Credit: American Geophysical Union

A giant slab of ice as big as California and Texas combined lurks just beneath the surface of Mars between its equator and north pole, researchers say.

This ice may be the result of snowfall tens of millions of years ago on Mars, scientists added.

Mars is now dry and cold, but lots of evidence suggests that rivers, lakes and seas once covered the planet. Scientists have discovered life virtually wherever there is liquid water on Earth, leading some researchers to believe that life might have evolved on Mars when it was wet, and that life could be there even now, hidden in subterranean aquifers. [‪Photos: The Search for Life on Mars]

The amount of water on Mars has shifted dramatically over the eons because of the Red Planet’s unstable obliquity — the degree to which the planet tilts on its axis of rotation. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a large moon to keep it from wobbling, and so the direction its axis points wanders in a chaotic, unpredictable manner, regularly leading to ice ages.

Although researchers have long known that vast amounts of ice lie trapped in high latitudes around the Martian poles, scientists have recently begun to discover that ice also is hidden in mid-latitudes, and even at low latitudes around the Martian equator.

Learning more about past Martian climates and where its water once was “could help us understand if locations on Mars were once habitable,” study lead author Ali Bramson, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told Space.com.

To look at ice hidden beneath the Martian surface, Bramson and her colleagues focused on strange craters in a region called Arcadia Planitia. This area lies in the mid-latitudes of Mars, analogous to Earthly latitudes falling between the U.S.-Canadian border and Kansas.

These odd craters are about 1,075 to 1,410 feet (328 to 430 meters) wide. Unlike most craters of their size, which are bowl-shaped, the craters the scientists focused on had terraces on their walls. Such terraces can form when layers of different materials, such as dirt, ice or rock, lie beneath a planet’s surface.

When a crater forms because of a cosmic impact, the shock wave from the collision can push aside weaker materials more easily than strong ones.

“The result is terracing at the interface between the weaker and stronger materials,” Bramson said in a statement.

Terraced craters of the size the researchers saw are virtually unknown outside of this area of Mars, Bramson said. However, all 187 craters the researchers studied have terraces, “which indicates something weird is going on in the subsurface,” study co-author Shane Byrne, also of the University of Arizona, said in the same statement.

The researchers used data from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create 3D models of the area’s craters, which allowed them to measure the depth of the terraces. They next used the orbiter’s Shallow Radar, or SHARAD, instrument to beam radar pulses at Mars, which helped them determine the composition of the layers making up the terraces.

The ice the scientists found measures 130 feet (40 m) thick and lies just beneath the dirt, or regolith, or Mars.

“It extends down to latitudes of 38 degrees. This would be like someone in Kansas digging in their backyard and finding ice as thick as a 13-story building that covers an area the size of Texas and California combined,” Bramson said.

Such an extensive ice sheet had never been seen at these latitudes before, study team members said.

In addition, this ice sheet is probably tens of millions of years old. “We believe this ice to be a relic of a past climate when snowfall could occur at these latitudes,” Bramson said.

The researchers will now model the behavior of the ice at Arcadia Planitia to learn more about how it it could have stayed preserved for so long, Bramson said. She and her colleagues detailed their findings online Aug. 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

SpaceX Unveils The Interior Of Crew Dragon | Video

New Photos of Pluto Show a World More Complex and Beautiful Than Ever

Pluto's Chaos Region Explored In New Probe Pics | Video

Total Solar Eclipse Visible From United States In 2017 | Visualization

New Firefly Rocket Engine Passes Big Test, Will Launch Small Satellites

Evolution of Video-Game Spaceships Traced in 'Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer's Edition'

Stephen Colbert Says Elon Musk Is Either a Supervillain or a Superhero

Why Pluto's Big Moon Charon Has a Red Polar Cap

'Red Dragon' Mars Sample-Return Mission Could Launch by 2022

Grabbing Mars samples

Feasible concept?

Gigantic Ice Slab Found on Mars Just Below the Planet's Surface

Sweeping over the south pole of Mars

Author: jappe

Grabbing Mars samples

Feasible concept?