Students design Martian weather forecasting tool
Cold and windy with a chance of dust storms, that's what a weather forecaster might say about Mars. But if we want our colonization plans of the Red Planet to be successful, a better understanding of Martian weather patterns is needed. A team of students of the Arizona State University (ASU) has developed a tool named Sensing Pressure and Atmospheric Research Console (SPARC), to make it possible, and they aim to put it on Mars to conduct a series of weather experiments. "If you want to go on vacation you always check the weather. Otherwise you would end up in Alaska with a Hawaiian shirt and shorts!" Brody Willard of the Sun Devil Satellite Lab (SDSL) at ASU told astrowatch.net. "With that in mind, we designed a payload that would not only record data about Mars atmosphere, but also records video of the Martian environment. That way we don't just...