Like Earth’s water table, Mars has an ice table. Sometimes, the ice table coincides with the ground’s surface as it does here. The knobby, pitted terrain is caused when ice is deposited and then sublimates over and over again. This geologic process is called “accrescence” and “decrescence” and also occurs on Neptune’s moon Triton and on Pluto, though in the outer Solar System the ice is not water ice. [More at link]
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mission instruments
- CRISM: Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars
- CTX: Context Camera
- HiRISE: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment
- MARSIS: Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding
- SHARAD: Shallow Radar
- THEMIS: Thermal Emission Imaging System
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- All Mars missions list
- Curiosity rover
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- Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN)
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- Mars Express (MEX)
- Mars Odyssey
- Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) / Mangalyaan
- Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
- Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
- Perseverance Rover
- Tianwen-1 orbiter/rover
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