Mars
Mars is covered with vast expanses of sand and dust and its surface is littered with rocks and boulders. The dust is occasionally picked up in vast planet-wide dust storms. Mars dust is very fine and enough remains suspended in the atmosphere to give the sky a reddish hue. The sand is believed to move only slowly in the martian winds due to the very low density of the atmosphere in the present epoch. In the past, liquid water flowing in gullies and river valleys may have shaped the martian regolith. Mars researchers are studying whether groundwater sapping is shaping the martian regolith in the present epoch, and whether carbon dioxide hydrates exist on Mars and play a role. It is believed that large quantities of water and carbon dioxide ices remain frozen within the regolith in the equatorial parts of Mars and on its surface at higher latitudes.
Read more about this topic: Regolith
Famous quotes containing the word mars:
“But in the dome of mighty Mars the red,”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Human beings will be happier—not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse,
And Mars yaf me my sturdy hardinesse.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)