(ANSYS Inc.: South Pointe, PA) -- ANSYS Inc., a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, recently announced that the University of Alberta used software from ANSYS to aid in interpreting weather data received from the Phoenix Mars lander. In creating a virtual environment of the planet’s unique atmospheric conditions, scientists discovered that heat and radiation from the lander itself could affect daily readings, such as atmospheric pressure, wind velocity, and temperature. The software helped scientists interpret the data transmitted from the Phoenix to Earth—with rapid turnaround while the mission was in progress—to identify the effects of the lander itself.

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