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The past few years have seen unprecedented advances in our knowledge of space. We’ve landed a spaceship on a comet, photographed mountain ranges on Pluto, found ever-more Earth-like ‘exo-planets’ in distant solar systems and even photographed snow avalanching on Mars from orbiting spacecraft. Richard Branson, owner of The Lodge luxury ski chalet in Verbier, has long been developing the first space planes for tourism, and now both NASA and Elon Musk, the billionaire behind PayPal, Tesla electric cars and SpaceX, have announced plans to establish a human colony on Mars within the next decade. So, the big question now is: what will the skiing be like? InTheSnow’s Editor is so interested that he actually sat down with his son Robert and spent the summer researching the terrain features that space probes have already identified and photographed on the moons and planets of our solar system. The space-snow-hunting duo not only found mountains, bowls, ridges and pipes that are super-sized compared to anything we have on planet Earth but they also found snow in a rainbow of colours, thanks to different chemical make-ups. They even found a moon where it has been snowing, scientists think, for millions of years but with powder so fine that it takes thousands of years to get a foot deep. They’ve compiled their findings into the first guidebook to potential snow sports destinations on other moons and planets, imaginatively entitled Snow In Space, and here are some of the more-exciting extra-terrestrial terrain features scientists have so far located. Biggest Vertical: Mars Mars is home to the highest mountain so far discovered in the solar system, Olympus Mons, which is about 25km high, around two-and-a-half times higher than Mt Everest, and has a footprint so big that it would cover France if it were on Earth. It’s believed to be snow-capped at times, but how far you can ski down remains an unknown. Best Powder Stash Enceladus, the sixth largest of Saturn’s 62 moons (and counting), is believed by scientists to be a world of perpetual snowfall, and probably the best powder in the solar system at that, described as “superfine ice crystals” by Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, which carried out a study into the moon. The water that forms the snow is believed to come from giant geysers that spew material into the atmosphere, some of which, scientists believe, falls back onto Enceladus as snow, the rest escaping into space and supplying most of the material making up one of Saturn’s famous rings. The snow is so fine that scientists estimate that less than a thousandth of a millimetre falls each year, meaning it takes 30,000 years for a foot of powder to build up. Best Ridge: Iapetus Ridge skiers need look no further than Saturn’s moon Iapetus, the planet’s third-largest moon and the eleventh biggest in the solar system. Iapetus, a world of snow and ice, has a very interesting terrain feature: an impressive equatorial ridge, known as the Toledo and Tortelosa Montes, which runs three-quarters of the way round the moon for some 1,300km. It’s 20km wide and averages 13km high (so half as high again as Mt Everest) and contains crater impacts, leading scientists to believe it is ancient. Longest Half Pipe: Tethys Saturn’s inner moon Tethys has a 100km wide trench, known as the Ithaca Chasma, which runs from the moon’s North Pole to its South Pole for over 2,000km and continues to span nearly three-quarters of the moon’s circumference. Biggest Cliff Jump Opportunity: Miranda Or Charon? Miranda, the fifth largest of the 27 known moons of Uranus, was discovered as recently as 1948 and has only been visited from Earth once by the Voyager 2 probe, which made observations of the moon during its Uranus flyby in January 1986. The moon is believed to be home to the biggest known sheer cliff in the solar system, Verona Rupes, which is variously estimated at 5–10km straight down, so the potential for the greatest cliff jump in history here. However, more-recent observations of Pluto’s moon Charon by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which came closest to Charon on 14 July 2015, passing by about 80,000km away, revealed a 9km deep canyon, named Argo Chasma, which at an estimated 700km in length is more than twice as long and five times as deep as The Grand Canyon. The canyon may feature sheer cliffs as big as 5km high, potentially rivalling Verona Rupes for the title of the tallest known cliff face in the solar system. Best Bowl Skiing: Callisto The many craters on Jupiter’s moon Callisto, which is the third biggest of the 180+ so far discovered in the solar system and larger than Pluto, include the largest known in the solar system, Valhalla, the main part of which is some 1,800km across, with outer rings extending to 3,800km in diameter. Best Bowl For STAR WARS Fans: Mimas New photos of Saturn’s moon Mimas, taken by the Cassini spacecraft and released recently by NASA, got sci-fi fans excited due to its resemblance to the Death Star from Star Wars. But snowsports fans ought to be excited too because what appears to be the dish of a vast planet-destroying space gun is in fact one of the solar system’s biggest powder snow bowls (we’re hoping): an impact crater 141km wide and 10km deep – so quite a ride. Good thermals are required though, as the average temp is -141°C. Steepest Run: Turgis The 580km wide Turgis crater on Saturn’s third-largest moon Iapetus has very steep sides descending for 15km to the base of the impact crater. Best For LORD OF THE RINGS Fans: Titan The Mithrim Montes mountains are on the solar system’s second-largest moon, Saturn’s Titan, which is also the only moon to have a full atmosphere of its own. Located near the moon’s equator, they consist of three parallel ridges oriented east–west and spaced about 25km apart – so a kind of Les 3 Vallées of Titan, and they’re named after mountains in Tolkien’s books. They were named as recently as 2012, and the highest peak is 3,337m high. Snow In Space Facebook page: Snow In Space Snow In Space by Patrick and Robert Thorne is a 100-page, hardback, A5-sized book. Published by Snow Hunter Ltd, it is available by mail order only and costs £9.99 + £3.01 P&P. To order, click here. Enregistrer Enregistrer

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