Mars Year 1

Mars Year 1 is the first year of Martian timekeeping standard developed by Clancy et al.[1] originally for the purposes of working with the cyclical temporal variations of meteorological phenomena of Mars, but later used for general timekeeping on Mars. Mars Years have no officially adopted month systems. Scientists generally use two sub-units of the Mars Year:

  • the Solar longitude (Ls) system: 360 degrees per Mars Year that represent the position of Mars in its orbit around the Sun, or
  • the Sol system: 668 sols per Mars Year. This system consists of uniform time units. However, Mars Year sols may be confused with rover mission times that are also expressed in sols.

Unlike in the day vs. sol distinction, "Mars Year" has no unique Latin term. Start and End dates of Mars Years were determined for 1607–2141 by Piqueux et al.[2] Earth and Mars dates can be converted in the Mars Climate Database,[3] however, the Mars Years are only rational to apply to events that take place on Mars.

Mars Year 1 started on 11 April 1955 and ended on 25 February 1957.[2] Mars Year 1 is preceded by Mars Year 0.

  1. ^ Clancy, R. T.; Sandor, B. J.; Wolff, M. J.; Christensen, P. R.; Smith, M. D.; Pearl, J. C.; Conrath, B. J.; Wilson, R. J. (25 April 2000). "An intercomparison of ground-based millimeter, MGS TES, and Viking atmospheric temperature measurements: Seasonal and interannual variability of temperatures and dust loading in the global Mars atmosphere". Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. 105 (E4): 9553–9571. Bibcode:2000JGR...105.9553C. doi:10.1029/1999JE001089.
  2. ^ a b Piqueux, Sylvain; Byrne, Shane; Kieffer, Hugh H.; Titus, Timothy N.; Hansen, Candice J. (May 2015). "Enumeration of Mars years and seasons since the beginning of telescopic exploration". Icarus. 251: 332–338. Bibcode:2015Icar..251..332P. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2014.12.014.
  3. ^ "Mars Climate Database v6.1: The Web Interface". www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr. Retrieved 29 January 2023.