{"id":29322,"date":"2023-01-11T16:20:44","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T16:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/11\/perseverance-rover-marks-one-mars-year-on-the-red-planet\/"},"modified":"2023-01-11T16:20:44","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T16:20:44","slug":"perseverance-rover-marks-one-mars-year-on-the-red-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/11\/perseverance-rover-marks-one-mars-year-on-the-red-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseverance Rover Marks One Mars Year on the Red Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use<\/a>.<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n\"\" <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Perseverance landed on Mars on Feb. 8, 2021. That\u2019s nearly two Earth years ago. But on Mars, the wheel of the year turns slowly. Just a few days ago, Perseverance marked its one-Mars<\/em>-year anniversary.<\/p>\n

A sol, or Martian day, is less than an hour longer than an Earth day. By comparison, a Mars year is almost twice as long as an Earth year \u2014 687 Earth days, or just shy of 669 sols. This is partly because Mars, being farther away, sweeps out a larger orbit around the sun. However, Mars\u2019 orbital eccentricity is also considerably larger, which causes its seasons to vary significantly in length.<\/p>\n

Right now, it\u2019s spring for Perseverance, where it and its companion helicopter Ingenuity are hanging out in a basin within the Jezero Crater. Once it powered on for the warm season, the rover immediately started caching sample tubes<\/a> for the upcoming Mars Sample Return mission. But this time around, Perseverance is scooping up samples of regolith<\/a> from baby sand dunes, instead of drilling out rock cores.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Winter on Mars is the shortest season, but it still reaches -190F. That\u2019s cold enough to freeze Mars\u2019 whiff of a carbon dioxide atmosphere into dry ice<\/a>. To guard against its electronics cracking in the extreme cold of its first Martian winter, mission engineers powered the rover down so that it would reach a uniform temperature. Happily, in the northern hemisphere (where all our rovers are), spring is the longest season, lasting 194 sols.<\/p>\n

You can use this zoomable widget from NASA<\/a> to see what the pair have been up to, day by day, since their mission began:<\/p>\n