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Morning frost spotted on Mars where it was thought water frost impossible to exist

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Morning frost spotted on Mars where it was thought water frost impossible to exist

Morning frost has been spotted on Mars in a part of the planet where it was thought impossible for water frost to exist for the first time.

The “astonishing” discovery on volcanoes near the planet’s equator confirms that ice is not just confined to the red planet’s poles, and indicates that water ice is far more common across Mars than previously realised.

Frost was spotted atop the Tharsis volcanoes – the tallest volcanoes across the Solar System.

Dr Minjae Kim, research fellow, Department of Physics, University of Warwick, said ice deposits must have formed during Mars’s ancient past when climatic conditions were “starkly different.”

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