Ice

We are on Devon Island. It is the largest uninhabited island in the world, the same size as Croatia. A lot of the island is under an icecap but there is also a 20km crater made by an asteroid that hit 20m years ago. The conditions in the crater are the most similar on earth to those on Mars. As a result NASA and the Canadian Space Agency have a research station here to prepare for a potential future crewed mission to Mars, the Moon or the asteroids! It gives you some idea how alien the place feels.

In the photo, our naturalist/zodiac driver is explaining how snow eventually forms glaciers. The older the glacier and the more compressed the snow, the clearer and bluer it appears.