Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Wow, guys, you sure are polite

¨Three Feet¨
nick hoffman — (archived)

One reason your post got a frosty reception was that youŕe actually wrong - or at least partly so.

I spent a while trying to find a public version of the in formation about seasonal CO2 ice thickeness, and I finally found this image:-

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002300/a002306/mola_snow_graph_max_north.tif

(From THIS website ).

As you will see from the diagram, the thickness of seasonal ice at a typical location at 68 degrees north is bareley within the seasonal cap and has expected accumulation depths of a mere 0.2 metres or about 8 inches.

If this falls as snow, it would be a heavy covering, like a moderate terrestrial snowfall. If it accumulates as frost, then it will coat all exposed objects and, indeed, encase the lander in a sheath of ice.

This is not unexpected. The mission plan anticipates eath"of the solar-powered lander once it stops receiving sunshine and becomes severely frozen.

It is *possible* that the lander will awaken in the spring, but that is unknown.

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