EPSC 2012: Gale Crater set for summer heat wave?
September 28, 2012

Gale Crater set for summer heat wave?

Preliminary weather reports from the Curiosity’s Remote Environment Monitoring Station (REMS) are showing some surprisingly mild temperatures during the day. Average daytime air temperatures have reached a peak of 6 degrees Celsius at 2pm local time. A Martian day – known as a Sol – is slightly longer than Earths at 24 hours and 39 minutes. Temperatures have risen above freezing during the day for more than half of the Martian Sols since REMS started recording data. Because Mars’s atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s and its surface much drier, the effects of solar heating are much more pronounced. At night the air temperatures sink drastically, reaching a minimum of -70 degrees just before dawn.

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory touched down in Gale Crater on 5th August 2012 close to the equator of Mars at a latitude of 4.5 degrees south. The southern hemisphere of Mars is approaching springtime, leading to speculation about possible temperatures for at the height of Martian summer.

“That we are seeing temperatures this warm already during the day is a surprise and very interesting,” says Dr Felipe Gómez of the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid. “It’s very early days and we are only now being able to test our models against REMS observations. If this warm trend carries on into summer, we might even be able to foresee temperatures in the 20s – and that would be really exciting from a habitability point of view. In the daytimes, we could see temperatures high enough for liquid water on a regular basis. But it’s too soon to tell whether that will happen or whether these warm temperatures are just a blip.”

REMS pressure sensors have also been recording slightly higher pressures than expected. In winter, Mars becomes cold enough for carbon dioxide at the poles to freeze, forming seasonal ice caps. Since carbon dioxide makes up most of the atmosphere, this process causes the overall atmospheric pressure to vary through the year. Models and data from previous mission predicted that Curiosity would land around the minimum mean pressure for the year. So far, the pressure measurements from REMS do indeed appear to be rising slowly. The pressure has risen from a daily average of around 730 pascals during the first three weeks after landing to around 750 pascals – a tiny fraction of the average pressure at sea level on Earth.

“The pressure data show a very significant daily variation of pressure, following a fairly consistent cycle from Sol-to-Sol. The minimum is near 685 pascals and the maximum near 780 pascals. The majority of the variation is due to large scale waves in the atmosphere called tides. These tides are different from tides in the Earth’s ocean because they are forced by heating due to the sun rather than the gravitational pull of the Moon. The tides are sensitive to the distribution of cloud and dust in the atmosphere, and also the large scale pattern of winds – rather like the jet streams on Earth,” says Javier Gómez-Elvira, the Principal Investigator of the REMS Instrument.

IMAGES
Two small booms on the rover mast will record the horizontal and vertical components of wind speed to characterize air flow near the Martian surface from breezes, dust devils, and dust storms. A sensor inside the rover’s electronic box will be exposed to the atmosphere through a small opening and will measure changes in pressure caused by different meteorological events such as dust devils, atmospheric tides, and cold and warm fronts. A small filter will shield the sensor against dust contamination. Credit: REMS Team/CAB.


B. In this image, the spacecraft specialist’s hands are just below one of the REMS mini-booms. The other mini-boom extends to the left a little farther up the mast. The image was taken during installation of the instrument in September 2011, inside a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. REMS also includes an ultraviolet-light sensor on the rover deck and, inside the body of the rover, an air-pressure sensor and the instrument’s data recorder and electronic controls. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/?ImageID=3406

CONTACTS

Dr Felipe Gómez
Centro de Astrobiología
Madrid

Anita Heward
EPSC 2012 Press Officer
Europlanet RI
Mob: +44 7756 034243
Email: anita.heward@europlanet-eu.org

EPSC Press office (24-28 September only)
Tel: +34 91 722 3020
Tel: +34 91 722 3021
Fax: +34 91 722 3022

FURTHER INFORMATION

ROVER ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING STATION
The Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) is a suite of sensors that will provide in situ measurements of near-surface air temperature, wind, pressure, water vapour, ground temperature, and downwelling UV Radiation.
These measurements strongly relate to three of the MSL goals: • to assess the biological potential of the regions explored by the rover • to investigate planetary processes that influence habitability, including the role of water • to characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation. The REMS project is led by the Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA), and funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial (CDTI) and the Plan Nacional I+D+I and the Ministerio de Defensa trough the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial.
For more information, see: http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/

CENTRO DE ASTROBIOLOGIA
The Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) is a collaborative centre of trans-disciplinary research with common astrobiological goals of studying the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the Universe. It is a joint venture of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). CAB was established in 1999 and is located in Madrid, Spain. Currently, 150 researchers and technicians work at CAB on different scientific projects at a national and international level.
http://cab.inta-csic.es/en/inicio
EUROPEAN PLANETARY SCIENCE CONGRESS 2012
The European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) is the major European meeting on planetary science and attracts scientists from Europe and around the World. The 2012 programme includes more than 50 sessions and workshops. The EPSC has a distinctively interactive style, with a mix of talks, workshops and posters, intended to provide a stimulating environment for discussion.

This year’s meeting is taking place at the IFEMA-Feria de Madrid, Spain, from Sunday 23 September to Friday 28 2012. EPSC 2012 is organised by Europlanet, a Research Infrastructure funded under the European Commission’s Framework 7 Programme, in association with the European Geosciences Union, with the support of the Centro de Astrobiología Details of the Congress and a full schedule of EPSC 2012 scientific sessions and events can be found at the official website: http://www.epsc2012.eu/

EUROPLANET

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The Europlanet Research Infrastructure brings together the European planetary science community through a range of Networking Activities, aimed at fostering a culture of cooperation in the field of planetary sciences, Transnational Access Activities, providing European researchers with access to a range of laboratory and field site facilities tailored to the needs of planetary research, as well as on-line access to the available planetary science data, information and software tools, through the Integrated and Distributed Information Service. These programmes are underpinned by Joint Research Activities, which are developing and improving the facilities, models, software tools and services offered by Europlanet RI.

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