NASA Findings Suggest Jets Bursting From Martian Ice Cap

An earlier theory proposed that the spots were patches of warm, bare ground exposed as the ice disappeared. However, the camera on Odyssey, which sees in both infrared and visible-light wavelengths, discovered that the spots are nearly as cold as the carbon dioxide ice, suggesting they were just a thin layer of dark material lying on top of the ice and kept chilled by it. To understand how that layer is produced, Christensen’s team used the camera — the Thermal Emission Imaging System — to collect more than 200 images of one area of the ice cap from the end of winter through midsummer.