Mars vs. Earth Weather

Choose a location on Earth and see how its weather compares to the weather on Mars at the InSight lander in Elysium Planitia.

Choose Earth Coordinates

Yesterday's Weather

Earth
Mars

About this page

This page was built with Bootstrap and interacts with two different APIs: the NASA InSight Weather API and the OpenWeather One Call API.

The purpose of the project was to learn how to integrate information from multiple sources into a single page and also allow for users to choose the information that they would like to see displayed. In the case of this page, users are able to choose a latitude and longitude on Earth with which to compare the weather found at Elysium Planitia, the location of the InSight Lander.

A few notes:
  1. Data availability:

    The data from the InSight lander includes temperature, air pressure, and wind speed. The pressure and wind speed measurements are not always available because there were not enough data points for that sol.

    More information regarding the available data can be found at the API documentation.

  2. Apples and Oranges Comparisons:

    Comparing pressure and wind data is not quite as straight-forward as this page makes it seem because the atmospheric pressure on Mars is less than 1% of Earth's. This means any comparison of wind speed would not be very enlightening as a 60 mph wind on Mars would feel like an 8 mph wind here on Earth.

    For an explanation of the physics behind this look here.

  3. Mars Calendar vs. Earth Calendar:

    For simplicity, the data pulled from Insight is the last sol's data point, which is then compared to yesterday's weather at the chosen point on Earth. This may not be entirely accurate, because one Sol (Martian Solar Day) is 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than an Earth day. Additionally, the seasons on Mars do not sync up with those on Earth so the comparisons are to satisfy curiosity rather than produce new insight.

    For more info on Mars' calendar look here.