Facts about MARS

MARS

Mars is the 4th planet in the solar system and the second largest planet. It is known as the red planet. Some people are tempted to live on mars forever and never come back to earth. Mars has the tallest mountain in the solar system. On mars only 18 missions have been successful. Also, on mars the sun looks half the size it does on earth. Mars has two lumpy moons that were discovered in 1877. They are so tiny that astronomers think they were asteroids pulled into orbit around Mars by its gravity. 

Mars has a huge polar ice cap. If it is melted the water would cover the whole planet. Mars has a pink sky. Mars may look hot, but it is actually very cold. It’s named after the Roman God of War because of its red color that reminds them of blood. Don’t worry, Mars doesn’t have blood on it. The planet is red because of a mineral called iron oxide that’s very common on its surface. It’s rocky with craters and mountains. Not a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn. Its landscape includes some of the tallest volcanoes that we know about in the solar system. One’s 21km high and 600km in diameter. The seasons are more extreme too because Mars’s orbit is in an elliptical shape. That means when it gets cold it gets really cold – even the hottest summer’s day would be not much above freezing. Not exactly beach weather! Even though Earth is much bigger than Mars, they both have approximately same amount of landmass! That’s because most of Earth is covered in water. There’s therefore plenty of land to explore on Mars. Mars has the largest dust storms in the solar system, that are so big that they could cover the entire planet! They can also last for months. Liquid water is on mars and it used to have a giant ocean. It has 24 hours in a day but has 687 days in a year. The deepest and longest canyon of our solar system is on Mars whose name is Valles Marineris. Valles Marineris is 4000 kilometers long, 200 km wide and 10 kilometers deep. But the earth’s largest valley canyon is 446 km long, 30 km wide and 1.6 deep. The biggest mountain out of all planets is on Mars. The name of that mountain is Olympia. Its height is 21 Km, and it is 600 Km long. But we know the earth’s highest peak is Mount Everest. It is 8848 meters high. Out of all satellite of our solar system, not even a single satellite is orbiting to their host so close, like Phobos. The orbit of Phobos is only 6000 kilometers away from the surface of Mars. The temperature on Mars is -63°C while the average temperature on Earth is -14°C. At the center of Mars it has a core made of Iron, Nickel and Sulfur. Surface temperatures on Mars are too low for liquid water to exist and Mars has no rivers, seas, or oceans. However, there was water once. We know this because of the existence of dried-up water channels.  

In 1976 Viking Orbiter I sent a series of shots that showed a ‘face’ on the planet’s surface. Many saw this as an enormous sculpture built by intelligent life. It’s actually a mountain. The Olympus Mons volcano is the largest in the Solar system. Mars is half the size of Earth, and conditions are very different to those on our planet. Although Mars has a thin atmosphere and seasons, nothing grows there. Its red, deserted-like surface is littered with dust and rocks. 

Crewed missions to Mars will be long, dangerous and difficult. The first challenge involves the spacecraft itself. A rocket carrying enough fuel and cargo for a Mars mission would be too heavy to take off from Earth. The solution would be to fly the Mars rocket into orbit, piece by piece, and assemble it there. Also to survive the journey to Mars the crew would need to hibernate. The journey takes 8 months, during which astronauts would have to cope with boredom and isolation. One solution would be to put astronauts to deep sleep.

Information credit: Google

Picture credits: Wikipedia and Google