Happy New Year! On March at least.
Yesterday (February 7) is the start of a new year on the Red Planet. While a year on Earth lasts 365 days, each Mars year lasts 668 sols (Mars days) – or 687 Earth days, since each sol lasts 24 hours and 39 minutes a little longer than an Earth day. Because the Red Planet takes almost twice as long to orbit the sun as Earth, you celebrate your 23rd Earth every 23 months.
It is now ‘Mars Year 36’ on Mars, followed by humans on Earth. “Mars Year 1” began after a significant dust storm was detected in 1956, called “the great dust storm of 1956”. To calculate how old you would be on Mars, you could divide your age by 1.88 (but note: traveling to Mars would not actually make you younger).
The Mars New Year begins when three different missions on the Red Planet close. The United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbit will arrive in orbit around Mars on Tuesday (February 9). A day later, China’s Tianwen – 1 mission is also expected to enter orbit. Tianwen-1 has three different sins: an orbit, lander and small rover. On February 18, NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance will make a daring landing via a parachute and aerial crane in a region known as Jezero Crater. So it’s going to be a busy year on the Red Planet.
Related: How long does it take to get to Mars
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Mars has four seasons just like on Earth, with cooler winters and warmer summers. The March year always begins with the spring equinox of the northern hemisphere, beginning with autumn in the southern hemisphere.
Unlike Earth, however, Mars’ seasons are not all equally long. This inequality is because the orbit of the Red Planet around the sun has a more extreme elliptical shape than the earth. The season we are entering now, spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars, is the longest season on the planet and lasts 194 sols.
Unlike Earth, Mars experiences much more extreme temperatures. The planet’s annual average temperature is minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius).
In addition, during the spring and summer of Mars in the southern hemisphere of the planet, the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud can form a strange weather phenomenon, which is essentially a giant ice crystal cloud that stretches 1,800 kilometers and can last more than 80 soles .
Due to the more elliptical orbit of the planet, Mars seasons can also have a variety of strange effects. For example, during spring and summer in the southern hemisphere of the planet, Mars is closer to the sun and moves faster. The denser proximity of the sun warms the planet’s atmosphere, and the increased heat and velocities of the planet whipping around so close to the sun stir up particles in the Martian soil, which can lead to intense dust storms that can hit the entire globe. stretch.
In fact, in 2019, NASA’s Opportunity rover “died” after a global dust storm covered the spacecraft’s solar power plants, preventing its batteries from charging and losing contact with mission teams on Earth.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.