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A Martian year is approximately 668.6 sols, equivalent to approximately 687 Earth days [1] or 1.88 Earth years. The sol was adopted in 1976 during the Viking Lander missions and is a measure of time mainly used by NASA when, for example, scheduling the use of a Mars rover .
The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun in respect to the stars, its sidereal year, is about 686.98 Earth solar days (≈ 1.88 Earth years), or 668.5991 sols. Because of the eccentricity of Mars' orbit, the seasons are not of equal length.
The basic time periods from which the calendar is constructed are the Martian solar day (sometimes called a sol) and the Martian vernal equinox year.The sol is 39 minutes 35.244 seconds longer than the Terrestrial solar day, and the Martian vernal equinox year is 668.5907 sols in length (which corresponds to 686.9711 days on Earth).
That calculation produced too many leap years because Earth’s trip around the sun is 365.242 days. ... “Sols” are Martian days, so a year on Mars is 668 sols. But it takes Mars 668.6 sols to ...
If the second set of parameters is not included it will automatically calculate the days between a given date and today. It is based on the product of the count of Earth days past and the ratio of the length of Earth's solar day length (86400 seconds) with a Mars solar day (88775.24409 seconds), rounded to the nearest sol.
This means that there are seasons on Mars, just as on Earth. The eccentricity of Mars' orbit is 0.1, much greater than the Earth's present orbital eccentricity of about 0.02. The large eccentricity causes the insolation on Mars to vary as the planet orbits the Sun. (The Martian year lasts 687 days, roughly 2 Earth years.)
The landing ellipse is about 4,400 m (14,400 ft) below Martian "sea level" (defined as the average elevation around the equator). The expected near-surface atmospheric temperatures at the landing site during Curiosity ' s primary mission (1 Martian year or 687 Earth days) are from −90 to 0 °C (−130 to 32 °F).
A collection of Martian rocks could reveal details about potential past life on the Red Planet – but first NASA has to get them back to Earth.. For years, the U.S. space agency's Perseverance ...