venerable
米航空宇宙局は火星の南極に二酸化炭素（ＣＯ２）が凍ってできたドライアイス状の雪が降っていることを無人探査機「マーズ・リコネサンス・オービター」による上空からの観測で確かめたと発表しました。題して、Martian Blizzard! 少しずつですが、着実に火星のことが解明されはじめました。
サブタイトルにあるvenerableは「尊敬すべき、尊い」というおなじみの意味ですが、ここでは無人探査機のことをおどけて指しています。「無人探査機さま」という感じでしょうか。（UG）
Martian Blizzard! It’s Snowing on the Red Planet
New findings by a venerable NASA orbiter reveal a new dimension to Martian weather systems
By DANIEL CRAY | September 17, 2012
Bit by bit, feature by feature, Mars is slowly revealing itself to us. A century ago, it was thought of as a planet crisscrossed by a network of canals — surely the great irrigation channels of a highly advanced race. Then we flew by for a first close look in the early 1960s and saw nothing but a cratered wasteland, little better than our own moon, save for the rusty color. But closer study has revealed much more. Mars was indeed once wet, as the dry seabeds and riverways that score its surface attest. Indeed, it still has some water, as new sightings of seasonal streaking down mountain faces caused by springtime ice melt show.
Now comes word from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that it’s snowing on the Red Planet — a lot. A massive, 310-mile-diameter (500 km) cloud persists all winter long over the planet’s south polar cap, dumping snow to blizzard-level depths. The catch: this snow isn’t made from water crystals, but carbon dioxide, and that’s just a little bit of what makes the new findings — and the way they were uncovered— so intriguing.
