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Mars is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s dry, rocky, and bitter cold. The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars, is one of Earth's two closest planetary neighbors (Venus is the other). Mars is one of the easiest planets to spot in the night sky — it looks like a bright red point of light. Despite being inhospitable to humans, robotic ...
- Humans to Mars
What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about...
- NASA Space Place
Mars is a cold desert world. The average temperature on Mars...
- Humans to Mars
Sep 26, 2023 · What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet. Like the Moon, Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and a driver of technologies that will enable humans to travel and explore far from Earth.
- Structure and Surface
- Time on Mars
- Mars’ Neighbors
- Quick History
- What Does Mars Look like?
Mars is a terrestrial planet. It is small and rocky.Mars has a thin atmosphere.Mars has an active atmosphere, but the surface of the planet is not active. Its volcanoes are dead.One day on Mars lasts 24.6 hours. It is just a little longer than a day on Earth.One year on Mars is 687 Earth days. It is almost twice as long as one year on Earth.Mars has two moons. Their names are Phobos and Deimos.Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. That means Earth and Jupiter are Mars’ neighboring planets.Mars has been known since ancient times because it can be seen without advanced telescopes.There was even a flying helicopter on Mars. Seriously! The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, successfully tested powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time. It hitched a ride to Mars...Several missions have orbited, landed on, or roved around on Mars: InSight, MAVEN, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and many more! Mars is the only planet we have sent rovers to. They drive around Mars...This infographic uses composite orbiter images and an outline of the United States to show the scale of the Valles Marineris (a canyon system more than 2,000 miles long!). Swipe left and right to see how big this canyon system is compared to the United States. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Red Planet is actually many colors. At the surface, we see colors such as brown, gold, and tan. The reason Mars looks reddish is due to oxidization – or rusting – of iron in the rocks, regolith (Martian “soil”), and dust of Mars. This dust gets kicked up into the atmosphere and from a distance makes the planet appear mostly red.
- Why is Mars called the Red Planet? The bright rust color Mars is known for is due to iron-rich minerals in its regolith — the loose dust and rock covering its surface.
- Mars Q&A with an Expert. We asked David C. Agle media relations at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California which handles missions on the Martian surface such as the Perseverance Rover some questions about the Red Planet.
- Mars' surface. The planet's cold, thin atmosphere means liquid water likely cannot exist on the Martian surface for any appreciable length of time. Features called recurring slope lineae may have spurts of briny water flowing on the surface, but this evidence is disputed; some scientists argue the hydrogen spotted from orbit in this region may instead indicate briny salts.
- Mars' moons. The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall over the course of a week in 1877. Hall had almost given up his search for a moon of Mars, but his wife, Angelina, urged him on.
Mars facts. Surface temperature: -153 ° C (-243 ° F) to 20 ° C (70 ° F) Average distance from Sun: 228 million kilometers (142 million miles), or 1.5 times farther from the Sun than Earth. Diameter: 6,780 kilometers (4,212 miles), Earth is 1.9 times larger. Volume: 163 billion km³ (39 billion mi³), Mars could fit inside Earth a little ...
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With a radius of 2,106 miles, Mars is the seventh largest planet in our solar system and about half the diameter of Earth. Its surface gravity is 37.5 percent of Earth’s. 3:27. Mars rotates on ...
