Plan(et) Your Vacation!

Take your next vacation to space!

We choose to go to the moon... not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

See the most recent humidty and temperature from MARS!

More info

General Info

Compare weather patterns on earth and mars to identify the perfect time to visit!

Mars data was obtained from the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) aboard the Curiosity rover. Curiosity is currently on Sol 3812 (as of April 27th). One of the datasets for long term data was pre-cleaned and displayed useful data from Sol 1 (August 7, 2012 on Earth) to Sol 1895 (February 27, 2018 on Earth). The "most recent" data used actual REMS transmitted data, and involved about 40 columns and over 17000 rows that were cleaned and made useable. We also used https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/historical-weather-api for South Bend weather data. It contains data from 2012-2023.

Ella is a freshman mechanical engineer at the University of Notre Dame. Originally from Pittsburgh PA, she like hanging out with friends, cooking interesting foods, and complaining about matlab in her free time. Colin: My name is Colin Davidson. I'm a first year chemical engineer at the University of Notre Dame. I like to build robots (especially ones that play football) and I also love to play volleyball and rock climb.

One of the biggest things we noticed was how periodically Mars weather changed. From day to day and year to year, Mars was always consistant. Earth had a lot more variety in data, but was consistantly warmer with higher pressure.

Visualizations and Comparisons

Mars Pressure over Time (Color = temperature)
The data suggested there seemed to be the most extreme temperatures at the more medial pressures. It was also easy to visualize apparent seasons using the temperature and pressure.
Earth Pressure over Time (Color = temperature)
This data was much more variable, with less consistent periods. Once again the highest temperatures were achieved at the medial pressures, but there did not seem to be the same correlation for cold temperature.
Mars Temperature over Time
It is certainly colder on Mars, but the seasons are longer and more consistant. The values only have a range of 45 degrees C.
Earth Temperature over Time
The weather on Earth has much larger range in temperature, with over 60 degrees C in range. In general it is warmer than Mars however.
Pressure vs Temperature (Shorter scale)
This is a smaller time scale than on Earth, but there is likely a correlation between pressure and temperature on Mars, as the highest temps correlate to a pressure of around 860 hPa.
Pressure vs Temperature (Shorter scale)
Earth surface pressure is not very consistant, showing a slight gravitation toward a pressure in 980-990 hPa range for the summer months. From this graph, it does not seem like there is a strong correlation between pressure and temp, but there are similarities in pattern.

Watch Earth and Mars dance around their current pressures and temperatures. Mars pressure's consistancy is one of the reasons there is so little cloudcover. Earth has varying pressures, which would lead to higher and lower temperatures, humidities, and clouds. Try to pick out when Earth is colder than Mars... that may be when you want to go!

Non-Comparison Visualisations

Mars UV Data: The sensor only runs at certain timestamps, leaving a large blank section. Other than the data gap, it is easy to see the steady increase then decrease of all of the UV levels as the day goes on and becomes night. UV ABC showed the largest increase, presumably because it is the sum of UV A,B, and C. Other than that, UV A showed the highest increase.
Darker Blue = UV A, Trace 1 = UV B, Trace 2 = UV C, Trace 3 = UV ABC, Trace 4 = UV D, Trace 5 = UV E
Earth Surface Pressure vs Precipitation, color = Temperature
More precipitation almost always correlated to higher temperatures and a pressure of around 980 hPa. Temperature and pressure do not rely on precipitation however, as there are many different temperatures and pressures at precipitation 0.0-0.1 in.
Mars Atmospheric Opacity.
Look how nice it is everyday! This graph is not exactly helpful (data wise), but it demonstrates how thin the atmosphere on Mars is, allowing little cloud cover and clear, sunny skies.
Earth Surface Pressure vs Temperature, color = Cloud Cover
There is lots of variablitiy in cloud cover, but one consistancy is that the lowest pressures led to the highest cloudcover.

Here is an animation of temperature on Mars, by month. It is helpful for determiing the best time to go to Mars. The data is displayed and animated in degrees Kelvin (K).

MARS!