Mondo Knows Facts
Mars polar caps grow and shrink every year
Frozen carbon dioxide condenses out of the air, changing the planet's pressure Each Martian winter, carbon dioxide freezes onto the dark polar cap and the ice edge advances towards the equator. In spring it sublimes back into gas, and the global atmospheric pressure swings by roughly a quarter. The northern cap keeps a permanent water-ice layer beneath its seasonal frost. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
Mars once had a global magnetic fieldRemanent magnetism in old crust shows it switched off billions of years agoA day on Mars lasts 24 hours 40 minutesRover teams work on Mars time and shift their day slightly each dayMars hosts the largest volcano in the solar systemOlympus Mons on Mars stands about two and a half times taller than Mount EverestSunsets on Mars appear blue to the human eyeFine Martian dust scatters red light while allowing blue light to pass throughValles Marineris on Mars is the largest canyon system in the solar systemStretching over four thousand kilometres it dwarfs Earth Grand CanyonMars has two tiny irregularly shaped moons named Phobos and DeimosThe dark cratered satellites resemble captured carbonaceous asteroids
🪐 Spacefact 148 of 200
← → to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: mars, polarice, seasons
Mars polar caps grow and shrink every year: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Frozen carbon dioxide condenses out of the air, changing the planet's pressure. The figure is taken from USGS Astrogeology Science Center, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.