{"id":26770,"date":"2022-12-30T21:16:50","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T21:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/30\/this-week-in-space-the-red-planet-and-the-pale-blue-dot\/"},"modified":"2022-12-30T21:16:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T21:16:50","slug":"this-week-in-space-the-red-planet-and-the-pale-blue-dot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/30\/this-week-in-space-the-red-planet-and-the-pale-blue-dot\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in Space: The Red Planet and the Pale Blue Dot"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hello, readers, and welcome back to the last This Week in Space of 2022. As the year draws down to a close, American aerospace \u2014 both public and private \u2014 has gone as quiet as a winter\u2019s night. So, we\u2019re consoling ourselves with a triple scoop of news from Mars. Climate scientists have used Nvidia\u2019s RTX ray tracing to create a whole new version of the Blue Marble. Thursday also saw SpaceX launch the first of its Gen2 Starlink satellites. The cherry on top? We\u2019ll wrap up with a few words on tonight\u2019s once-in-a-lifetime skywatching opportunity.<\/p>\n

NASA Explores a Winter Wonderland \u2014 on Mars<\/h3>\n

Mars is a cold and forbidding place, with barely a breath of carbon dioxide for an atmosphere. It\u2019s winter in Mars\u2019 northern hemisphere, just like here on Earth. And like here on Earth, there is a strange, stark beauty to the Martian winter. In celebration, NASA released a collection of strange and lovely images of wintry snowscapes on Mars.<\/p>\n

Winter is cold<\/i> on Mars. So cold, in fact, that most of the \u2018snow\u2019 on the Red Planet is actually carbon dioxide that froze right out of the air<\/a> in sandy, cube-shaped crystals of dry ice. The atmospheric pressure is so low that snow from water ice seldom reaches most of the Martian surface. Instead, it sublimates away into vapor before it ever touches the ground. NASA explains, \u201cSnow occurs only at the coldest extremes of Mars: at the poles, under cloud cover, and at night.\u201d<\/p>\n