Did you know Mars has 'begun a new orbit'? Me neither
By Brian Clegg
According to the European Space Agency, ‘At exactly 10:16 CEST/08:16 UTC on Earth, the Red Planet begins a new orbit around our Sun’ (that was on 30 September). Now leaving aside that ‘UTC’ where they mean ‘GMT’, this seems a weird assertion, which was then picked up verbatim by various press outlets.
For me, if something is starting a new orbit, it’s changed direction. No longer in its old, boring orbit it appears that Mars is venturing out in directions new. Perhaps it’s moved further out to get a better view of Jupiter?
Of course, this isn’t what they meant. All they were saying is that based on a totally arbitrary idea of when the ‘new year’ (or strictly the ‘new sol’) on Mars begins, it was about to start the next cycle. Seemingly ‘The convention for counting years in the martian calendar started in 1955, with the first year coinciding with a major storm named “the great dust storm of 1956″.’
We don’t usually say at midnight on New Year’s Eve ‘Happy New Orbit!’ It makes no more sense to suggest this is happening on Mars. I’m afraid this is the worst type of spam press release. The kind of thing that risks giving science a bad name.
Image from Unsplash+ by Alex Shuper
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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.
Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/10/did-you-know-mars-has-begun-new-orbit.html
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