Weary of Whistler? Find Davos dull? For a vacation with a difference, blast off with our winter sports guide to the best off-earthly snow and ice
Few things spell the holiday season like a sprinkling of snow. It may not always be the cold white stuff we're accustomed to on Earth, but there's plenty of opportunity for future space explorers to have winter fun in the solar system ... and beyond.
As the solar system's innermost planet, Mercury is generally much too hot for a white Christmas. In some spots, however, natural freezers have harboured ice for billions of years. In a single polar crater on Mercury, daytime temperatures can soar above 250 °C, yet patches in shadow stay cold enough to preserve water ice. There is plenty of it, too – in some craters the ice is tens of centimetres thick, with even ...
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