Curiouser and Curiouser

The Curiosity rover takes a "selfie"

When you're a resident of Mars, anniversaries work a bit differently.

For our cosmic next-door neighbor, a Martian year -- one complete orbit around the sun -- takes 687 days. So it's an all-more-impressive milestone to hear from NASA that the latest Mars rover, Curiosity, celebrated the end of its first Martian year just this past June.

Curiosity joins the ranks of such other NASA robot rovers as Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity; their missions are to boldly go where we humans just can't (at least not yet).

So in celebration of Curiosity's first Martian anniversary, let's take a look at one of our closest planetary neighbors:

-- How far is it from Earth to Mars?  It's tricky. Mars has an elliptical orbit, which means it is closer or farther away from Earth depending on the time of year. The distance varies from 39 million to about 240 million miles.

-- Mars is roughly double the size of our moon ... and half the size of Earth. (As measured by each sphere's radius.)

-- Though a Martian year is nearly twice the length of a year on Earth, a Martian day is much closer to a day on Earth: about 1.03 Earth days (or about forty minutes longer).

-- Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos (named after the sons of an Italian god of war).

-- There's no oxygen on the surface of Mars, but there is also, essentially, no air at all. With only a scant bit of atmosphere on the planet, most gases simply float into outer space.

A Curiosity photo of the Martian landscape

-- There's plenty of water on Mars, which is one reason scientists think the planet may have once harbored life. It is, however, frozen into the ice caps at the northern and southern ends of the planet. The ice does occasionally melt during the "summer" seasons.

-- The first satellite to capture a picture of the surface of Mars was Mariner 4. In 1965, Mariner 4 captured 22 photographs from just over 6,000 miles away, revealing a crater-covered landscape.

-- Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano ever discovered in our solar system, is nearly the size of Texas. Its primary crater is 40 miles across.

-- There have been four American rovers sent to Mars (Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity), and all four were successfully landed and communicated back to Earth (although Sojourner lasted a scant two months).

-- The USA isn't the only country to get spacecraft to Mars. Russia was the first country to get a manmade craft to Mars, landing two rovers (Mars 2 and Mars 3) in 1971. The probes sent back 60 pictures of the surface, taken while orbiting the planet. A British rover known as Beagle 2 was also launched in 2003, though it was lost upon landing on Christmas Day.

An earlier picture from the Opportunity rover

For More:

-- Happy Anniversary! On Mars, Curiosity Rover Has Done a Lot in a Long Year - from CNN.com. Check out this overview of Curiosity's accomplishments in its first Martian year.

-- Mars Rovers [video] - from National Geographic. Some mini-documentary videos looking into the difficulties of landing on and navigating the Martian terrain.

-- How Big is Space? - from the BBC. An interactive (and rather scaled-down) look at how far our nearest neighbors truly are.

-- How Far is it to Mars - Another interactive look at the distance from Earth to Mars.

-- Mars on NPR - Articles on the science and discovery of the Red Planet.

-- NASA's Mars Page


News from the Red Planet:

-- Mystery Light on Mars Spotted by Curiosity - from Discovery News.

-- NASA Rover on Mars Sees Mercury Cross the Sun's Face - from Space.com.

-- Software Bug Found on Mars Curiosity Rover - from the Telegraph. A surprising development (though it's yet to prove a threat to the mission).

-- China Bound for Mars in 2020 - Curiosity may gain a new friend, as China moves ahead with plans to expand their own space program with a rover to Mars.

From the Catalog:

Non-fiction:

-- Mars by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

-- The Smithsonian Book of Mars by Joseph M. Boyce

-- Managing Martians by Donna Shirley, with Danelle Morton

-- Ultimate Mars Challenge [DVD] - PBS documentary on Curiosity

-- Mars Rising [DVD] - documentary on the challenges of a manned mission to Mars


Fiction:

-- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

-- War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

-- A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

-- Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire's Club by Ben Bova

-- Red Planet Blues by Robert J. Sawyer



-- Post by Ms. B