Martian icecap hosts a massive CO2 deposit

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Source:  Johanna L. Miller, Physics Today
Excerpt: Radar data reveal a solid reservoir that contains almost as much carbon dioxide as the planet’s entire atmosphere. …because Mars doesn’t have a large moon, it… wobbles by up to tens of degrees on time scales of hundreds of thousands of years…. a profound effect on the planet’s polar icecaps. Substantial amounts of material sublimate and are redeposited, creating a complex structure of overlapping layered deposits. Most of those deposits are primarily water ice. …but now, data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal at least one large deposit of CO2 ice…if ...vaporized, as it certainly was at some point in the past and will be again in the future, it could nearly double the average pressure of Mars’s thin, CO2-based atmosphere. See also:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20100526.html

physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i6/p12_s1

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