East Antarctic temp plummets to -95C

East Antarctica has set a global record for soul-crushing cold, according to newly analysed data.

The remote region plunged as low as minus 94.7C (minus 135.8F) in August 2010, the Nasa satellite data revealed.

Then on July 31 this year, it came close again, at minus 92.9C (minus 135.3F). The old record was minus 89.2C (minus 128.6F).

Ice scientist Ted Scambos, at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, announced the cold facts at the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco.

"It's more like you'd see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles," Mr Scambos said. "I'm confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth."

However, it will not be in the Guinness Book of World Records because these were satellite-measured figures, not from thermometers, he added.

"Thank God, I don't know how exactly it feels," Mr Scambos said.

Most of the time researchers need to breathe through a snorkel that brings air into the coat through a sleeve and warms it up "so you don't inhale by accident" the cold air, Mr Scambos said.

Waleed Abdalati, an ice scientist at the University of Colorado and Nasa's former chief scientist, and Mr Scambos said this is likely to be an unusual random reading in a place that has not been measured much before and could have been colder or hotter in the past and we would not know.

"It does speak to the range of conditions on this Earth, some of which we haven't been able to observe," Mr Abdalati said.

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Plummets to the Martian Surface - Video

Watching this amazing high-definition video of Curiosity’s hair-raising landing on Mars will make you clutch at your armrest. Compiled from the probe’s MARDI descent camera, it is the and gives you a chance to experience what it’s like to ride along with the rover down to the Martian surface.

The video starts with Curiosity’s heat shield being jettisoned from its landing stage body — comprised of the rover tucked up beneath a UFO-like platform.

The rover hovers for a while under its parachute, wobbling back and forth as it takes in the spectacular view of craters and the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, its eventual target.

Vertigo kicks in as the rover dives lower and the engines kick in for Curiosity’s powered descent sequence.

Though they can’t be seen in the video, the rover gets lowered down on 25-foot-long cables for its “sky crane” maneuver near the end.

Just before hitting the Martian soil, the engines kick up a huge amount of dust and pebbles, which obscures the ground and may be responsible for damaging one of Curiosity’s wind sensors.

The soft landing went off with pitch-perfect precision and was a big victory for NASA engineers.

This video was compiled by visual effects editor Daniel Luke Fitch from the high resolution images that the rover has beamed back.

All but a few frames from the descent video have come back at this point, with low-res thumbnails filling in for the missing ones in the video.

The images have been enhanced with noise reduction, color balance, and sharpening “to make it look as good as it could,” said Fitch.