First Snow of the Year...on Mars!

The Phoenix Mars Lander has seen its first snow! Well, kind of. The snow did not reach the ground as it isn't quite cold enough yet. Phoenix used an instrument called a LIDAR (think radar but it uses a laser instead of radar waves) to detect snow falling a few miles up in the atmosphere of Mars.

One of the neat things to notice is that you can see the trails moving off to the right as the snow falls. The snow is falling into a lower layer of the atmosphere and the wind is altering the snow's path...yep, you can see wind on Mars!

Winter is coming...I think it would be really cool if we got to see some snow reach the ground before Phoenix runs out of power.