Temperature extremes on Mars
Friday, September 14, 2012 - 09:03
in Astronomy & Space
"Mars ain't no kind of place to raise your kids; in fact it's cold as hell" sang Elton John in "Rocket Man", and although the song was released in 1972—four years before the first successful landing on Mars—his weather forecast was spot-on. Even though the fantastic images that are being returned from NASA's Curiosity rover show a rocky, ruddy landscape that could easily be mistaken for an arid region of the American Southwest one must remember three things: this is Mars, we're looking around the inside of an impact crater billions of years old, and it's cold out there.