Curiosity Rover Completes Two Martian Years, Records Seasonal Changes On Alien Planet

The Curiosity rover has already been on Mars for two full Martian years. This allowed the rover to observe seasonal cycles in the Red Planet. This has produced a highly detailed record of the changes in the planet for the first time.

According to Tech Times, the length of stay on the planet by Curiosity has allowed astronomers to differentiate between authentic seasonal changes and random weather conditions. An example was the significant release of methane detected by the spacecraft during the first year of exploring the Gale Crater. However, the release did not happen the following year, leaving the cause of the release a mystery.

Yet, astronomers interpreting data taken from Curiosity have noted a more subtle cycle of methane levels that appear only on certain occasion. Other changes that may be related with the changes of the season in the planet include the concentration of water vapor, temperature, air pressure and the amount of UV light reaching the brownish surface.

"Curiosity's weather station has made measurements nearly every hour of every day, more than 34 million so far. The duration is important, because it's the second time through the seasons that lets us see repeated patterns," said Ashwin Vasavada of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Temperatures recorded in Gale Crater drop to as low as 148 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and rise to an enjoyable 60.5 degrees Fahrenheit during the peak of a balmy summer day. Furthermore, Mars' orbit is far more different than Earth's, meaning that its southern hemisphere has more extreme seasons.

"Mars is much drier than our planet, and in particular Gale Crater, near the equator, is a very dry place on Mars," said Germán Martínez, a Curiosity science-team collaborator from Spain at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in a NASA press release. "The water vapor content is a thousand to 10 thousand times less than on Earth."

The Curiosity rover left Earth in 2011 and touched down on the alien planet a year later. It takes Mars 687 Earth days to orbit once around the sun. Researchers hope to understand what the Red Planet was like several billion years ago by analyzing seasonal changes on the planet at present.