Avalanches, Icy Explosions, and Dunes: NASA Is Tracking New Year on Mars

While New Year’s Eve is around the corner here on Earth, Mars scientists are ahead of the game: The Red Planet completed a trip around the Sun on Nov. 12, 2024, prompting a few researchers to raise a toast.

But the Martian year, which is 687 Earth days, ends in a very different way in the planet’s northern hemisphere than it does in Earth’s northern hemisphere: While winter’s kicking in here, spring is starting there. That means temperatures are rising and ice is thinning, leading to frost avalanches crashing down cliffsides, carbon dioxide gas exploding from the ground, and powerful winds helping reshape the north pole.

“Springtime on Earth has lots of trickling as water ice gradually melts. But on Mars, everything happens with a bang,” said Serina Diniega, who studies planetary surfaces at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

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Mars’ wispy atmosphere doesn’t allow liquids to pool on the surface, like on Earth. Instead of melting, ice sublimates, turning directly into a gas. The sudden transition in spring means a lot of violent changes as both water ice and carbon dioxide ice — dry ice, which is much more plentiful on Mars than frozen water — weaken and break.

“You get lots of cracks and explosions instead of melting,” Diniega said. “I imagine it gets really noisy.”

Using the cameras and other sensors aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (), which launched in 2005, scientists study all this activity to improve their understanding of the forces shaping the dynamic Martian surface. Here’s some of what they track.

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