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it's called a Zamboni, John Carter

Accepted submission by RandomFactor at 2018-12-23 18:33:26 from the how are those aluminum wheels working out for you now dept.
Science

A photo [wikipedia.org] released by the ESA Thursday shows a 51 mile wide flat circle of water-ice on Mars in the mile deep Korolev crater that resembles an alien ice skating rink [nbcnews.com]

The water is frozen in a location that allows it to remain perpetually frozen and consists of 531 cubic miles of ice.

The photo was stitched together from five images captured by a high-resolution camera aboard the [Mars Orbiter Express], which has been circling the Red Planet for the past 15 years. Each of the five "strips" used to create the composite image was taken during a separate orbit.

The article notes that

"This particular crater is very close to the polar ice cap, and the inside of the crater is at a lower elevation and more shadowed, so it creates a cold trap where the ice is stable"

This is reminiscent of the Lunar ice containing cold traps [wikipedia.org] that may be used for oxygen, water, and fuel [space.com] by future moon installations.


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