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Experiment Re-Creating a Carbon Dioxide Plume

Sept. 11, 2024
This video shows Martian soil simulant erupting in a plume during a JPL lab experiment that was designed to replicate the process believed to form Martian features called spiders.

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This video shows Martian soil simulant erupting in a plume during a lab experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California that was designed to replicate the process believed to form Martian features called "spiders."

In the experiment, researchers chilled Martian soil simulant in a container submerged within a liquid nitrogen bath. They placed it in JPL's Dirty Under-vacuum Simulation Testbed for Icy Environments (DUSTIE), where the air pressure was reduced to be similar to that of Mars' southern hemisphere. Carbon dioxide gas flowed into the chamber – diffused through the bright yellow sponge seen suspended over the simulant here – and condensed from gas to ice over the course of three to five hours. A heater inside the chamber then warmed the simulant from below, cracking the ice. After many tries, researchers saw a plume of carbon dioxide gas erupting from within the powdery simulant, as seen here.

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