Your Daily Mars Weather Report
Landing 4 years ago today, Curiosity, the lone “living” inhabitant of Mars has been sending weather reports back to Earth every day. Actually in its case, every “sol” a solar day on Mars lasting 40 minutes longer than our Earth day. The rover celebrated its birthday with brisk temperatures with lows near -100 degrees, but warmed up to a balmy 19 degrees for the high. The heat we’ve been experiencing this August doesn’t seem too bad now does it? But why and how does Curiosity take these measurements every sol?
The meteorological data is gathered by two booms on the rover and takes in crucial information on Martian air and surface temperatures, pressure, humidity, and UV levels. Scientists hope to use this information to better understand small and large scale weather events on Mars. If you’re curious to see what weather looks like on the red planet check outthis site managed by NASA. Compare the weather report above with what we saw today on ABC 17 News’s almanac on the website below.
As you can tell it is much colder than what we see in Missouri or even on Earth. This is due to the Mars’ thin atmosphere and the fact that Mars is nearly 34 million miles further than the sun than the Earth. To see this look at the pressure: here in Columbia it was around 19″ of mercury, there it only reached 0.23″. However Mars does have a thick enough atmosphere to generate weather phenomena that is common here too including lightning, clouds, dust storms, and dust devils.
Take the weather report into mind when bearing this hot August weather and consider how much colder it is a mere 34 million miles away. If you feel inclined on this beautiful Saturday night, you can actually see Mars after sunset if you look to the east. It’s the ruddy looking object in the sky.
