8 Planets: Mars

4. MARS: THE RED PLANET

✪ Mars, the Red Planet, is the fourth planet from the sun.

MARS PROFILE
Mass	6.42 x 1023 kg
Diameter	6787 km
Mean density	3940 kg/m3
Escape velocity	5000 m/s  (5 km/s)
Average distance from Sun	1.524 AU (227,936,640 km)
Rotation period (length of day in Earth days)	1.026
Revolution period (length of year in Earth days)	686.98
Obliquity (tilt of axis degrees)	25
Maximum surface temperature	310 K
Minimum surface temperature	150 K
Visual geometric albedo (reflectivity)	0.15
Highest point on surface	Olympus Mons (about 24 km above surrounding lava plains)
Atmospheric components	95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen and 1.6% argon
Surface materials	Basaltic rock and altered materials
Credits: NASA Planet Profiles

✪ Mars is home to an ever present red tint. This is due to a mineral called iron oxide that is very common on the planet’s surface.

✪ Mars has two moons Phobos and Deimos.

✪ Earth and Mars are similar in a lot of ways: (Credit: PlanetsforKids.org)

Polar Ice Caps – Mars has both North and South polar ice caps, much like Earth. Polar caps contain mostly frozen carbon dioxide instead of frozen water.

Though scientists think that life could have once existed there and the polar caps might be of water. 

Length of a Year – Mars is not much farther from the Sun than Earth. As a result, a typical year on Mars is 1 year and 320 days. 

Length of a Day – While a year on Mars might be almost twice as long as a year on Earth, the length of a day there is almost identical. A Martian day is 24 hours and 39 minutes long, less than an hour longer than a day on Earth.

Seasons – Mars has seasons like Earth too. These seasons are much longer than Earth seasons because Mars is so much farther from the sun.

Volcano: Olympus Mons, Canyon: Valles Marineris and Basin: Borealis

✪ The largest volcanic mountain (largest volcano and largest mountain) in the Solar System is on Mars  at more than 25 kilometers high (that’s three times higher than Mount Everest). It is called Olympus Mons.

✪ Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the solar system, stretching 4,000 kilometers across the planet’s surface.

✪ The Borealis Basin makes up 40% of the planet’s surface, taking up almost the entire northern hemisphere.

✪ Mars doesn't have a protective layer of atmosphere like Earth, so it cannot store heat from the sun. As a result, the temperature on Mars regularly drops to -125°F (-82°C) in the winter and only rises to 23°F (-5°C) in the summer.

✪ The first true Mars mission success was Mariner 4 in 1965.

✪ Since the start of the twenty first century, NASA's Mars Odyssey 2001 was launched in 2001 and is currently orbiting the planet. It was joined in 2003 by Europe's Mars Express and in 2006 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.