Mars
In addition to Earth, the planet Mars also has polar ice caps. They consist of primarily water-ice with a few percent dust. Frozen carbon dioxide makes up a small permanent portion of the Planum Australe or the South Polar Layered Deposits. In both hemispheres a seasonal carbon dioxide frost deposits in the winter and sublimes during the spring.
Data collected in 2005 from NASA missions to Mars show that the southern residual ice cap undergoes sublimation inter-annually. The most widely accepted explanation is that fluctuations in the planet's orbit are causing the changes.
Read more about this topic: Polar Ice Cap
Famous quotes containing the word mars:
“It makes us, or it mars us, think on that,
And fix most firm thy resolution.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“But in the dome of mighty Mars the red,”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)