Latest Climate of Mars Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study from an international group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) reveals that snowstorms that lash the northern hemisphere of Mars during the harsh winters may be predicted several weeks in advance. The team’s calculations reveal a connection between the snowfalls and a weather phenomenon special to Mars: fluctuations of pressure, temperature, wind speeds and directions that in...

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists will never know who first looked to the heavens and noticed the pale pink, barely visible orb that graces our early morning skies. We do know the Greeks named the red planet Ares in honor of their god of war. It wasn’t until the Romans came on the scene and renamed this celestial sphere for their own god of war, however, that we came to know our heavenly neighbor as Mars. Over the years, Mars has received a lot of...

NASA/JPL Report A Martian dust storm that NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been tracking since last week has also produced atmospheric changes detectable by rovers on Mars. Using the orbiter's Mars Color Imager, Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, began observing the storm on Nov. 10, and subsequently reported it to the team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The storm came no closer than about 837 miles (1,347 kilometers) from Opportunity,...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online It may not be in the company of little Martians, but NASA's Curiosity is determined to celebrate Thanksgiving this year with, or without, the company of extra-terrestrials. For its Thanksgiving festivities, the rover plans to use its Mast Camera (Mastcam) to examine possible routes and targets to the east. NASA said its priority is to choose a rock for the first use of the rover's hammering drill, which will collect samples of...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The remote sensing instrument package that will be a key part of an upcoming NASA mission investigating how Mars could have lost its atmosphere is ready for integration into the spacecraft. The $20 million package -- which was built at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and includes the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS), its electronic control box, the Remote...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Though Mars is 140 million miles away, it shares some similarities with Earth. Some of its landforms, for existence, closely resemble regions found here on Earth. It is by researching these similar landforms and landscapes that researchers are able to gather some assumptions about how these martian landscapes were formed. If the two areas look the same, perhaps they were created in the same way as well. Dr. Andreas Johnsson...

PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Observations of wind patterns and natural radiation patterns on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover are helping scientists better understand the environment on the Red Planet's surface. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) Researchers using the car-sized mobile laboratory have identified transient whirlwinds, mapped winds in relation to slopes, tracked daily and seasonal changes in air pressure, and...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA announced on Thursday during a teleconference that its Curiosity rover has experienced its first whirlwind on Mars. Although the rover did not snap a photo of the whirlwind, Curiosity's Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) was able to help detect the dust devil. REMS detected brief dips in air pressure, along with a change in wind direction, leading NASA scientists to determine that there was a whirlwind passing by...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA said on Friday that its Curiosity rover has helped determine Mars' atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth's. Curiosity has been performing scientific experiments while positioned at "Rocknest," a site near Gale Crater. While parked, the rover has ingested and analyzed samples of the atmosphere. Findings from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments onboard Curiosity suggest that a loss of a fraction of the atmosphere...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online According to a new study, scientific modeling methods that predicated climate change on Earth can also be used on Mars as well. Researchers from Planetary Science Institute in Tucson report they have found that an unusual concentration of glacial features on Mars matches predictions made by global climate computerized models, in terms of age and location. "Some public figures imply that modeling of global climate change on Earth is...