The local atmosphere in Mars is clear in winter, dustier in spring and summer, and windy in autumn, NASA scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have found.
Advertisement
Because Mars is further away from the Sun compared to our planet, four Earth-years is equivalent to two Martian-years. Having data of two seasonal cycles on Mars helps to distinguish seasonal effects from sporadic events.
“Curiosity’s weather station has made measurements almost every hour of every day, more than 34 million so far”, said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. This duration is also crucial right now, since this is the second time that seasons are being repeated based on weather patterns.
Also, the earlier mentioned methane spike has been measured with the Curiosity rover’s laser spectrometer Sample Analysis of Mars (SAM) and its suite of tools that records methane concentrations.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, measurements obtained from the Gale Crater that include temperature, air pressure, ultraviolet light and minute traces of water vapor reveal strong evidence for a repeated weather pattern, indicating changing seasons.
“Mars is much drier than our planet, and in particular Gale Crater, near the equator, is a very dry place on Mars”, Germán Martínez, a Curiosity science team collaborator at the University of MI, said in the same statement. “The water vapor content is a thousand to 10 thousand times less than on Earth”, said Germán Martínez from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
NASA’s car-sized robotic rover, Curiosity, has reached its second Martian year in the planet, about 687 Earth days.
Curiosity rover has just celebrated its second Martian year since its arrival there in 2012, this Wednesday, May 11, at the Gale Crater.
Curiosity’s Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) has seen air temperatures varying from 60.5 degrees Fahrenheit (15.9 degrees Celsius) on a summer day to minus 148 Fahrenheit (minus 100 Celsius) on a winter night.
Happy second Mars year, Curiosity!
Air readings from the instrument inside Curiosity confirmed that the planet has seasonal trends and the Martian atmosphere is mostly made of carbon dioxide. But Rover captured slight shifts in methane concentrations, however, that may correlate with seasonal changes scientists speculate.
The event sees Earth as piggy in the middle, and NASA says stargazers will be able to see Mars grow brighter and larger in the night sky from May 18 until June 3.
Advertisement
While continuing to study the modern local environment, Curiosity is investigating geological layers of lower Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater, to increase understanding of ancient changes in environmental conditions, NASA said.
