The spiral troughs of Mars’ polar ice caps have been called the most enigmatic landforms in the solar system. The deep canyons spiraling out from Red Planet
December 16th, 2003
UA Scientist Has Role in American and European Missions to Mars The University of Arizona
The United Kingdom and the United States are about to land separate missions on Mars, and a University of Arizona scientist has a role in both. Mars missions are fraught with risks and challenges. But with luck, both the European and NASA missions will return data, and Peter H. Smith will soon compare the results. Smith is a member of the science team for Britain
December 16th, 2003
Undergraduate on Her Way to JPL as Mars Mission Collaborator The University of Arizona
University of Arizona astronomy senior Nicole Spanovich will be working on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission to Mars for the next four months because she went to a lecture given by Peter H. Smith and asked him for a job.
August 1st, 2001
Scientists Find Largest Flood Channels in the Solar System The University of Arizona
Scientists may have discovered the largest flood channels in the solar system on Mars, currently a cold desert planet. The northwestern slope valley system is ten times larger than Kasei Valles, the largest previously known outflow channel system on Mars, said James M. Dohm of the University of Arizona. The best explanation is that they were formed by catastrophic floods that at their peak potentially discharged as much as 50,000 times the flow of the Amazon River, Earth’s largest river, Dohm said. Smaller outflows flooded the valleys later in martian history. Dohm and others from the University of Arizona Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, U.S. Geological Survey-Flagstaff and Smithsonian Institution reported the discovery in the June 2001 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.
June 13th, 2001
UA Scientists Find Evidence for Geologically Recent Shallow Ground Ice at Mars’ Equator The University of Arizona
New high-resolution images from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) show evidence of ground ice on Mars as recently as 10 million years ago. More striking is that the signs of geologically recent ground ice deposits are near Mars’ equator, where ice was probably no deeper than 5 meters (15 feet) below the surface, University of Arizona scientists say. “If ground ice was present within 5 meters of the surface only a few million years ago, it is very likely to persist today within about the upper 10 meters,” said UA planetary sciences Professor Alfred S. McEwen. “This is especially interesting because it is an equatorial region of Mars, more accessible to exploration.”