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  • Released Tuesday, February 5, 2013
  • Updated Thursday, December 3, 2015 at 12:35PM
  • ID: 11184

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The closest planet to the sun seems an odd place to find enough ice to bury a city.

The planet's north pole gets little sunlight, especially in deep craters, as seen in this animation that simulates one Mercury day.

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Mercury is hot. Temperatures top 440 degrees Fahrenheit even in areas (red) of its north pole. Yet some spots (blue) stay below -200 degrees.

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Cold, shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole, such as Kandinsky and Prokofiev, can be three miles deep and may never receive any sunlight.

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How does Mercury get its ice? The first step may be a crash landing in one of its craters by an icy comet or asteroid.

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Step 2: Ice and frozen chemicals scatter across the crater, including areas that are always shaded from sunlight.

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Step 3: Ice remains in the shadows but disappears from areas that get sunlight. In time, a dark, insulating layer (black) may cover the ice.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Cover image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Video courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
North pole temperature image courtesy of NASA/UCLA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Topography image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Cartoon sequence courtesy of NASA/UCLA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington



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