Researchers have said that hunks of frozen carbon dioxide could explain one mysterious class of gullies seen on Martian sand dunes through the examination of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Moreover, the experiments will also be performed on sand dunes in Utah and California.

Serina Diniega, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said to have always dreamt of going on to Mars. Serina said that she now dreams of snowboarding on Mars down a sand dune on a block of dry ice.

Serina is also the lead author of a report published online by the journal Icarus. On Mars, The hillside grooves are known as linear gullies. These liner gullies were found to have constant width with raised banks along the sides.

The gullies on Mars do not have aprons of debris at the downhill. "In debris flows, you have water carrying sediment downhill, and the material eroded from the top is carried to the bottom and deposited as a fan-shaped apron", said Serina. Instead, there are pits at the downhill end.

According to scientists, the bright objects on Mars are pieces of dry ice. These have broken away from points higher on the slope. The pits are suggested by a new hypothesis to have formed because of the blocks of dry ice completely sublimating away into carbon-dioxide gas.