Tag Archives: heat flow

Lake under south polar ice cap requires local heat source

Thermal modeling suggests that active magmatism in the past few hundred thousand years could account for the presence of a large lake previously hypothesized beneath the Red Planet’s southern ice cap. Liquid water appears to be a fundamental requirement for … Continue reading

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InSight: Taking Mars’ internal temperature

Ambitious climbers, forget Mt. Everest. Dream about Mars. The Red Planet has some of the tallest mountains in the solar system. They include Olympus Mons, a volcano nearly three times the height of Everest. It borders a region called the … Continue reading

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Mars mantle models pave way for InSight lander

When NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander touches down on Mars in November 2018, it will become the planet’s most advanced geophysical monitoring station. From its landing site on the plains of Elysium Planitia, … Continue reading

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Southern polar eskers point to warmer past

Ice caps and glaciers on Mars today are “cold based,” meaning they are frozen solid to the ground beneath them. Scientists think the ice has been this way for most of the Amazonian period, the latest chapter in Mars’ geological … Continue reading

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