Not So Cold - Not So Warm

MARSDAILY

File photo of a Martian sunset

Ithaca - Jan 19, 2004
During the most recent early afternoon on Mars, the temperature at the rover Spirit landing site in Gusev crater was an admittedly chilly minus 11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit). But it was still warmer than most cities in the upper Northeast, gripped in a frigid winter chill.

The rover's Mini-TES instrument (for miniature thermal emission spectrometer) made the precise measurement of the landing-site temperature, at about three feet from the surface, at 1:15 p.m. Mars time, according to mission science team member Michael Smith of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Mars is 1.5 times farther from the sun than Earth.

It is day on Mars when it is night in most of the United States. But around the same time, at 1 p.m. today (Jan. 14), temperatures in the Northeast ranged from minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit in Caribou, Maine, to 9 degrees in Providence, R.I. Rochester, N.Y., was considerably colder than Gusev crater, at 3 degrees, according to Keith Eggleston, senior climatologist at Cornell University's Northeast Regional Climate Center. There were lunchtime subzero temperatures in Albany, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Concord, N.H., and Burlington and Montpelier, Vt.

However, the Mars landing site, where it is late summer, cooled off considerably in the evening, reaching an estimated low temperature of minus 90 Celsius (minus 130 Fahrenheit), said Smith.

Commented Eggleston, "Well, for the Northeast, that record will be a little harder to break."

Temperature at 1 p.m., Jan. 14 Location Temp. (Fahrenheit) Gusev crater, Mars 12 Providence, R.I. 9 Scranton Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 8 Hartford, Conn. 7 Buffalo, N.Y. 7 Rochester, N.Y. 3 Ithaca, N.Y. 3 Albany, N.Y. -2 Binghamton, N.Y. -2 Concord, N.H. -3 Syracuse, N.Y. -4 Burlington, Vt. -10 Montpelier, Vt. -12 Caribou, Maine -13 Mount Washington, N.H. -36

MARSDAILY

Spirit Robot Ready To Take First Three-Meter Stroll On Mars

Washington (AFP) Jan 14, 2004
The US Spirit robot will make its first three-meter trek on Mars late Wednesday, as part of its mission to seek out traces of water on the Red Planet, to determine if life once existed there, NASA officials said Wednesday. "We will be driving three meters (10 feet) on the surface of Mars," said NASA's Kevin Burke, who is overseeing the robot's descent from its platform, where it has sat since arriving on the planet January 3.