There is now a way for you to know the time on Mars, courtesy Mars24 Sunclock, a Java-based application. Created at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the app essentially shows you a Mars sunclock, and a graphical representation of the Red Planet, depicting the current sun and nightsides. The app also displays a numerical readout of the time in a 24-hour format, a plot depicting the relative orbital positions of Mars and Earth, a diagram showing the solar angle, and the path for particular locations on Mars. The current version of the application is 7.0.1a. It runs on systems with Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, among others, that have Java 1.6 or a higher version installed.
Last week, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and Curiosity made a touchdown on Mars' Gale Crater, approximately 352 million miles (567 million kilometers) and 36 weeks after being launched from Earth. Seven pairs of cameras were placed on the rover: the Remote Micro Imager, part of the Chemistry and Camera suite; four black-and-white Navigation Cameras (Navcams), two on the left and two on the right; and two color Mast Cameras (Mastcams).
The cameras enable the rover to capture hitherto unseen images of the Red Planet. Elaborating on Curiosity's schedule before its launch, NASA added that the first images from the rover would come from the one-megapixel Hazard-Avoidance cameras (Hazcams) attached to its body. Curiosity began its task only after its engineers deemed it safe to deploy the rover's Remote Sensing Mast and its high-tech cameras.
Curiosity, the car-sized rover, has been sending a volley of images from Mars. One of them is an image mosaic captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It also transmitted a cut-out of what is the first colour panorama image of its surroundings, while in the Gale Crater. The image shows the effects of the rocket engines in the descent stage blasting the ground. It comes from the left side of the thumbnail panorama obtained by Curiosity's Mast Camera.
Curiosity is currently receiving a software upgrade from NASA. Engineers at NASA are prepping to remove the existing entry, descent and landing software from Curiosity's central computer, and instead add the software for its surface operations.
Know more about the app, or download it here.