Climbing Mt. Sharp, Mars With a Faulty Vaisala Pressure Sensor

       This article correlates Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity pressures claimed for Mount Sharp with altitude in meters below areoid, the Martian equivalent of sea level. The data was originally published by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) Team, who work for JPL and NASA. Since this article is being placed on my ArkCode site, before analyzing the weather data let's take a quick look at how the Vaisala pressure sensor problem is encoded in Torah. On Figure 1 the axis term is DATA (information) ERROR. Touching it in a 110-letter box is VAISALA. A short transliteration of SHARP is at skip +1 on the full 330-letter matrix. There are 3 and 4-letter transliterations of MARS that share a letter mem.  Threre is also an ELS of CURIOUS. The full matrix was found against of about 7,986 to 1.  VAISALA was in a 110-letter box with DATA ERROR against odds of about 48 to 1. Now let's move on to the more serious actual weather data - and why it's likely faked.

A NOTE TO REGULAR ARKCODE.COM READERS ABOUT WHY THIS MARS-RELATED ARTICLE IS BEING PUBLISHED HERE.     

       The REMS Team has not done a proper job of putting weather data out, and may in fact be in rebellion to NASA. Until March 20, 2017 when the REMS Team published ludicrous data they generally went back and revised it - often after reading the critiques found in links from Table 1 below. We often see members of the REMS Team and their supervisors on our sites. But after March 20, 2017 the ground temperature lows became insanely cold and were not matched by very cold air temperature lows. The REMS Team ceased making changes, leaving us to guess as to what was going on. We explain this further at our article entitled HAYWIRE GROUND TEMPERATURES IN SUMMER OF MSL YEAR 3.

       The REMS Team and NASA have come to our MarsCorrect.com and Davidaroffman.com sites many times each week for years to both check on how their results are being received, and at times to see where they need to alter those results in an effort to draw less criticism. They even withdrew all their (never changing) wind data after we contacted JPL’s public relations man Guy Webster and they altered their Gale Crater Mars sunrise and sunset times to match my son David's calculations. The Finnish Meteorological Institute, which created the Vaisala pressure sensor, was here again via IP address 193.166.223.5 reading about our critique of their sensor as recently as March 23, 2018.

       The data base that we have created is superior to that put out by NASA because we show not just what they have claimed, but how they altered their data, in many cases in accordance with our nagging. We prove what we claim in many cases by publishing before and after print-screens that show what they first put out and how they altered it after reading our spreadsheets documenting their claims and our indications of anomalies in pressure and temperature.

       Note: While I do not keep records for average readers, those who come here from Governments around the world are logged in with IP addresses, etc. recorded. Why? Quite simple. The U.S. Government is not publishing the truth about Martian weather. Whenever I tell someone this the immediate first question is, "Why would they lie?" It's the right question, but it has an unpleasant answer. They are covering up evidence of life on Mars (at least in the past) that gives credence to UFOs which are discussed in detail along with supporting evidence in my Roswell article. It turns out that while the Government does a great job in covering up what happened in Roswell in 1947. The Achilles' heel of Government lies about space is found with the obviously faked weather data from Mars. There is a trail that the Establishment doen't want us to follow. It starts with fake weather on Mars, proceeds to the UFO cover-up and then likely moves on to Establishment politicians who (a) know the truth and (b) profit from what they know. For those readers who don't want to move beyond Torah Codes because there is some mental work required, thanks for visiting this article this far. There is an old saying, "No pain, no gain." But for those readers who can take the pain (largely honest, mid-level DoD plus General Mark A. Milley (U.S. Army Chief of Staff) and NASA personnel and foreign space agencies tired of crashing on Mars because they believed NASA's weather data, this article is especially for you.

MAKING THE CASE FOR FRAUD BASED ON NASA-PUBLISHED MSL WEATHER DATA.

       Our spreadsheets with before and after print-screens where appropriate are found in the links on Table 1. Sols are Martian days since the MSL landed on August 5 to 6, 2012. Solar longitude refers to where Mars is on its orbit around the sun.

TABLE 1 - WEATHER REPORTS ISSUED BY THE REMS TEAM AND OUR ANALYSIS OF THEM:

       Before going any further it should be noted that we have seen the numbering of MSL years is not always the same as what we refer to in the above charts. We label the first year of MSL on Mars as Year 1, but in at least one article we have seen it was referred to as Year 0. However we all agree on the Martian sols (days). On our charts Year 1 began at landing. It lasted 669 sols (until June 24, 2014). Year 2 then began, ending on Sol 1,338 on May 11, 2016.  As I write this article MSL, in the southern hemisphere of Mars, is in its winter season. We have at least 1,999 sols of data minus some critical data for the first 10 sols, and for a few other periods of time. 

        A word about units. On Earth the average pressure at sea level is 1,013.25 millibars or 1,013.25 hectopascals (hPa). There are 100 pascals (Pa) in a hectopascal, so average pressure on Earth is 101,325 Pa. NASA has traditionally claimed that average pressure on Mars is 610 Pa.

        The first look at data comparing some Year 3 and Year 2 is given here as Table 2. Note the small amount of variation in pressure differences then. There are 14 sols shown for each year segment. Six of them show pressure differences of 11 pascals (Pa) from one year to the next. The average pressure difference was 11.57 Pa. The smallest difference was 10 Pa and the largest difference was 13. However, as is shown later in Table 6, as Curiosity approached Sol 2,000 pressure differences published were generally around 17 to 20 Pa from the previous year. This was extremely close to what was expected based on altitude differences and scale height calculations. In fact, it appeared to be too close to what was expected.

TABLE 2 : Pressure and altitudes for MSL Years 2 and 3 between Ls 11 and 19:

       Altitudes were derived from a JPL site that can be found by searching for Where Is Curiosity Now? The site at https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/whereistherovernow/ is not as complete as we would like, but there are often 2 meter altitude curves that can be used for interpolation/approximation of altitude. Where we present altitude data, that’s where we found it. During Year 2 for this period between Ls 11 and Ls 18 altitude didn't change by more than a meter - floating between 4,447 and 4,446 meters below areoid. But for Year 3 there was an increase in altitude from about 4,266 to 4,251 meters below areoid. So the Year 3 segment shown started about 181 meters higher than Year 2, and finished about 195 meters higher. Knowing this we can ask, in accordance with scale height calculations, Is it reasonable to have pressures in Year 3 about 11 Pa lower than they were at a lower altitude in Year 2?

       In looking at whether the data is reasonable, or apparently fudged as often seemed to be the case with REMS until about March 20, 2017 (when the REMS Team, aware of our critiques, seemed to go into a rebellion mode) we will want to look at variations in pressure using a scale height calculation to see if the approximately 9 Pa pressure differences each year line up with these pressure differences. More important, we will look at the 11 Pa difference between Year 2 Ls 11 and Year 3 Ls 11.

       During Year 2 the pressure slowly climbed from 859 Pa to 867 Pa (actually reaching 868 Pa the sol before the end point on Sol 1,057). So the rise during this part of MSL Year 2 was about 8 to 9 Pa. Note that the pressure rose rather than fell but the altitude didn't really change by more than a meter from sols 1,041 to 1,056. 

       For Year 3 the pressure rose again, this time (sols 1,711 to 1,725) from 848 Pa to 855 Pa (actually reaching 857 Pa the sol before the end point on Sol 1,726). So that’s a rise of about 7 to 9 Pa for Year 3 – quite similar to what was seen for Year 2 but here the rover is clearly climbing to where average air pressure should be lower if we do not consider seasonal changes.

       In MSL Year 1 for this period pressures ran from about 866 Pa up to 875 Pa. Again, that’s an increase of 9 Pa between sols 374 and 389, but I have not yet been able to find altitude contour maps from that period, so I can't yet definitively comment on how altitude and pressure were, if at all, linked for those sols. However a JPL image shows the rover locations from landing through this period, and it doesn't look like it was more than from about 910 to 1,300 meters from the landing site (about 4,500 meters below areoid).    

      The expected pressures for altitudes 4,500 meters/4.5 km (Year 1), 4,447 meters/4.447 km (Year 2) and 4,266/4.266 km to 4,251meters/4.251 km below areoid (Year 3) are given on Tables 3A (for a scale height of 10.8 km) and Table 3B (for a scale height of 11.1 km).   On both Tables column K provides a ballpark estimate for how to account for the fact that pressures given are for Ls 11 which is not when maximum pressure occurs.  Under Column L highlighted in white numbers with a red background is the amount of pressure drop at Ls 11 from Year 2 to Year 3.

        A scale height is a distance over which a quantity decreases by a factor of e (approximately 2.72, the base of natural logarithms). It is usually denoted by the capital letter H. Scale height for Earth is 8.5 km. For Mars some sources use 10.8 km (as in The Martian Climate Revisited) while others use 11.1 km.  For comparison purposes Table 3A uses 10.8 km, while Table 3B uses 11.1 km.

       What’s immediately noticeable about Tables 3A and 3B is that the pressure calculated for the landing site altitude matches the maximum pressure (925 Pa) that NASA/JPL/The REMS Team permitted the public to see after they altered the data - in large part in response to higher pressures that they first published which were challenged by us. Table 4 lists some of the changes.

             Table 4 shows some of how JPL/REMS altered pressures off the expected curve for August and September 2012 and August 2013 and on through at least March 25, 2018 after we either brought the deviations up to JPL Public Relations Director Guy Webster, or published on our data on davidaroffman.com and marscorrect.com websites. Those pressures that were originally above 925 Pa are shown with a yellow shading. The significance of Table 4 is that it lets us know that there is an agenda to keep pressure reported for MSL either at or below the 925 Pa indicated by the scale height calculation on Tables 3A and 3B.

       As can be seen from Figure 3, a maximum pressure of 925 Pa was seen in MSL Year 1 at Ls 252 and 253 (Sols 170 &171). In MSL Year 2 this same pressure was attained at Ls 257 (Sol 846). If, for the moment, we overlook the 925 pressure maximum allowed by JPL or whoever is behind the data alteration, then it should be noted that Table 2 only deals with pressures produced in MSL Year 3 between Ls 11 and 19.  At Ls 11 in Year 1 the pressure given by the REMS Team was 866 Pa. This is about 92.83405% of the maximum pressure of 925 Pa (actually, 925.307 Pa)  Now let's use that figure to look at what happened from Ls 11 in Year 2 to Ls 11 in Year 3. There was an increase in altitude of 181 meters and a decrease in predicted pressure of about 15.30295 Pa (Table 3A, cell H8-H9), but the actual decrease in pressure was only 11 Pa. However, if the proportional idea is correct and we take 92.83405% of the predicted drop of 15.30395 Pa, then we revise it to a predicted pressure drop of 14.206 Pa. That's quite close to the 11 Pa supposedly measured (5 sols later there was a 13 Pa decrease from Year 2). The predicted and measured differences are clearly in the same ball park, but does this mean that NASA is correct - or does it mean that the data was manufactured by someone who knew how to calculate scale height?

        Now, let's dig a little deeper here. While modern textbooks like The Martian Climate Revisited use a scale height of 10.8, old sources use 11.1 and this figure is on the NASA webs site visited. The information looks old, mentioning Viking 1 and none of the landers since then in 1976. What happens if we assume that someone was tasked with predicting, i.e., manufacturing pressures for MSL based on the altitude change from MSL Year 2 to Year 3? Then the predicted pressure decrease (with Ls11 factored in) becomes only 13.67 Pa! A Pascal is only a hundredth of a millibar. We see that on 4 sols between Ls 11 and Ls 18 the actual pressure drop from Year 2 to Year 3 was 13 Pa.

       Given that NASA only sent a pressure transducer that could measure up to 1150 Pa, and that, as Table 4 shows, they often reported pressures above 925 Pa, and even above 1150 Pa only to revise them down when we challenged them, there is again reason to question the reliability of the data reported. NASA has often come to our site to view the CAD for the pressure transducer used on Mars Pathfinder. This CAD, shown again as Figure 2, is often visited by other space agencies too. What it shows is that two transducers were ordered by NASA for Pathfinder. One of them (Tavis - 2) was for the expected pressure range of 0 to 12 mbar (1200 Pa/0.174 PSIA). But the other transducer (Tavis -1) was designed to measure up to 1,034 mbar (103,400 Pa/15 PSIA). That's higher air pressure than is found at sea level on Earth.  

       While we hope our audit of NASA data will lead to organizational reform rather than any kind of legal action, if it ever does go legal then the first thing we would subpoena is documentation for what happened to that sensor on Figure 2. Did it really stay back on Earth, or was it secretly flown to Mars? Whereas Martian weather simply does not match the low pressures advocated by NASA, and especially because NASA has for a long time visited our web sites daily, we are confident that a full investigation will reveal that are we are again quite right, and that it's time for a new announcement from NASA indicating what the true pressure is there. See Annex G of our report entitled Mars Correct: Critique of All NASA Mars Weather Data for further details about the Tavis transducers ordered by NASA.

Table 5: *Originally JPL published a pressure of 7.05 mbar for Sol 1 at Ls 150, and 7.18 mbar for Sol 9 at Ls 155, however they later changed these pressures to N/A. VL- 1 and VL-2 data from http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/mars_data-information/data.html.

Table 6 was taken from my MarsCorrect site on March 22, 2018. It shows that on February 28, 2018 we predicted that for the current Martian year minimum pressure would be reached at about 711 to 713 Pa around Ls 148 on March 25, 2018 (MSL Sol 2002). The Table indicates that the pressure at Curiosity had dropped (from 727 Pa at Ls 136 on February 28, 2018) to 716 Pa at Ls 146 on March 21, 2008.

USING SCALE HEIGHTS TO ESTIMATE THE MINIMUM PRESSURE AT CURIOSITY AS IT CLIMBS MOUNT SHARP.  Table 6 was taken from my MarsCorrect site on March 22, 2018. It shows that on February 28, 2018 we predicted that for the current Martian year minimum pressure would be reached at about 711 to 713 Pa around Ls 148 on March 25, 2018 (MSL Sol 2002). The Table indicates that the pressure at Curiosity had dropped (from 727 Pa at Ls 136 on February 28, 2018) to 715 Pa at Ls 148 on March 25, 2018. Announced pressures were running about 17 to 20 Pa less than the last Martian year due to an altitude increase as the lander climbs Mount Sharp. However we believe that the pressures offered by the REMS Team are false and that the real pressure is about 85 to 100 times higher. Our prediction of what the REMS Team has offered the public was based on how pressure should fall with scale height IF the average pressure on Mars is 610 Pa (6.1 mbar) at areiod. Columns A, B and C show the pressure for the current Martian year. Columns N and O show what the pressure was for the same solar longitude (Ls) in the previous Martian year, and how much the pressure has supposedly fallen since then. We offered the caveat: Over the last month Curiosity has not continued climbing, but has in fact has actually descended from -4,147 meters to about -4,159 meters. This may have caused a small impact on our prediction for the exact minimum pressure experienced by Curiosity this year. Note: the REMS Team had initially published a false pressure of 1,167 Pa for Sol 2,002, but corrected it after we published our mocking top half of Figure 1 below. The corrected Figures will be shown on the bottom half of Figure 1 below. If 715 Pa is in fact the minimum pressure then we picked correct day for the minimum pressure and missed the 2 Pa wide actual pressure by 2 Pa. That's accuracy within 0.02 mbar, really better because we made the prediction based on the assumption that Curiosity would not descend.

On Table 6 column subjects and color codings are as follows (Note: JPL calls the first year of MSL on Mars "Year 0," the second year Year 1, and the third year "Year 2"):

Column Q shows the Ls during Year 1.