What Is The Fourth Planet
Mars: Everything yous need to know nigh the Scarlet Planet
Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is famed for its rusty cherry-red appearance. The Red Planet is a cold, desert world with a very sparse atmosphere. But the dusty, lifeless (as far as we know information technology) planet is far from dull.
Phenomenal dust storms tin can grow and so large they engulf the entire planet, temperatures can get then cold that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere condenses straight into snow or frost, and marsquakes — a Mars version of an earthquake — regularly shake things up.
It, therefore, comes every bit no surprise that this little cherry-red rock continues to intrigue scientists and is one of the most explored bodies in the solar system, according to NASA Scientific discipline (opens in new tab).
Related: How long does it take to get to Mars?
Befitting the Cerise Planet'southward bloody color, the Romans named information technology later on their god of war. In truth, the Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who likewise named the planet later on their god of war, Ares.
Other civilizations besides typically gave the planet names based on its color — for case, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the crimson one," while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the burn down star."
Why is Mars chosen the Blood-red Planet?
The brilliant rust color Mars is known for is due to iron-rich minerals in its regolith — the loose grit and rock covering its surface. The soil of Globe is a kind of regolith, also, albeit one loaded with organic content. According to NASA, the atomic number 26 minerals oxidize, or rust, causing the soil to look red.
Mars' landscape
The planet's cold, sparse temper means liquid water likely cannot exist on the Martian surface for any observable length of time. Features called recurring slope lineae may accept spurts of briny water flowing on the surface, but this evidence is disputed; some scientists contend the hydrogen spotted from orbit in this region may instead indicate briny salts. This means that although this desert planet is merely half the bore of Earth, it has the same corporeality of dry land.
The Red Planet is home to both the highest mountain and the deepest, longest valley in the solar organization. Olympus Mons is roughly 17 miles (27 kilometers) high, about three times as tall as Mount Everest, while the Valles Marineris arrangement of valleys — named later the Mariner 9 probe that discovered it in 1971 — reaches equally deep as vi miles (10 km) and runs eastward-w for roughly 2,500 miles (4,000 km), about i-fifth of the distance around Mars and shut to the width of Australia.
Scientists think the Valles Marineris formed mostly by rifting of the chaff as it got stretched. Private canyons inside the system are as much as 60 miles (100 km) wide. The canyons merge in the central office of the Valles Marineris in a region every bit much as 370 miles (600 km) broad. Large channels emerging from the ends of some canyons and layered sediments inside suggest that the canyons might one time have been filled with liquid h2o.
Mars likewise has the largest volcanoes in the solar system, Olympus Mons being one of them. The massive volcano, which is virtually 370 miles (600 km) in diameter, is broad plenty to cover the state of New Mexico. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with slopes that rising gradually similar those of Hawaiian volcanoes, and was created by eruptions of lava that flowed for long distances before solidifying. Mars also has many other kinds of volcanic landforms, from small-scale, steep-sided cones to enormous plains coated in hardened lava. Some minor eruptions might notwithstanding occur on the planet today.
Related: Space volcanoes: Origins, variants and eruptions
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Channels, valleys and gullies are found all over Mars, and suggest that liquid water might have flowed beyond the planet's surface in recent times. Some channels can be 60 miles (100 km) wide and ane,200 miles (2,000 km) long. Water may nonetheless lie in cracks and pores in underground rock. A report past scientists in 2018 suggested that salty water below the Martian surface could agree a considerable corporeality of oxygen, which could support microbial life. However, the corporeality of oxygen depends on temperature and pressure; temperature changes on Mars from fourth dimension to time as the tilt of its rotation axis shifts.
Many regions of Mars are flat, low-lying plains. The everyman of the northern plains are among the flattest, smoothest places in the solar organisation, potentially created by water that once flowed beyond the Martian surface. The northern hemisphere by and large lies at a lower elevation than the southern hemisphere, suggesting the chaff may be thinner in the north than in the due south. This departure between the north and south might be due to a very large impact shortly after the birth of Mars.
The number of craters on Mars varies dramatically from place to place, depending on how old the surface is. Much of the surface of the southern hemisphere is extremely sometime, and then has many craters — including the planet's largest, 1,400-mile-wide (2,300 km) Hellas Planitia — while that of northern hemisphere is younger and and so has fewer craters. Some volcanoes likewise have just a few craters, which suggests they erupted recently, with the resulting lava covering upwards any quondam craters. Some craters have unusual-looking deposits of droppings around them resembling solidified mudflows, potentially indicating that the impactor hitting underground water or ice.
In 2018, the European Space Agency'southward Mars Express spacecraft detected what could be a slurry of water and grains underneath icy Planum Australe. (Some reports describe it every bit a "lake," just it'south unclear how much regolith is inside the h2o.) This trunk of water is said to be virtually 12.four miles (20 km) across. Its undercover location is reminiscent of similar underground lakes in Antarctica, which have been establish to host microbes. Late in the year, Mars Express besides spied a huge, icy zone in the Red Planet'south Korolev Crater.
Mars' polar caps
Vast deposits of what appear to be finely layered stacks of water ice and grit extend from the poles to latitudes of near fourscore degrees in both Martian hemispheres. These were probably deposited by the temper over long spans of time. On meridian of much of these layered deposits in both hemispheres are caps of water ice that remain frozen year-round.
Boosted seasonal caps of frost appear in the wintertime. These are made of solid carbon dioxide, also known as "dry ice," which has condensed from carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. (Mars' think air is most 95% carbon dioxide by book.) In the deepest office of the wintertime, this frost tin extend from the poles to latitudes as low every bit 45 degrees, or halfway to the equator. The dry ice layer appears to have a fluffy texture, like freshly fallen snowfall, according to a report in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.
Mars' climate
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Mars is much colder than Earth, in big function due to its greater distance from the dominicus. The boilerplate temperature is about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus sixty degrees Celsius), although it tin can vary from minus 195 F (minus 125 C) almost the poles during the winter to as much equally lxx F (20 C) at midday nigh the equator.
The carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere of Mars is likewise almost 100 times less dense than World's on boilerplate, but it is even so thick enough to support weather, clouds and winds. The density of the temper varies seasonally, as wintertime forces carbon dioxide to freeze out of the Martian air. In the ancient past, the atmosphere was likely significantly thicker and able to support water flowing on the planet's surface. Over time, lighter molecules in the Martian temper escaped nether pressure from the solar wind, which affected the temper because Mars does not have a global magnetic field. This process is existence studied today past NASA'south MAVEN (Mars Temper and Volatile Evolution) mission.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found the outset definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds, making Mars the just body in the solar arrangement known to host such unusual winter weather. The Red Planet as well causes water-ice snow to fall from the clouds.
The dust storms on Mars are the largest in the solar system, capable of blanketing the entire Red Planet and lasting for months. I theory every bit to why dust storms can grow and then big on Mars is because the airborne dust particles absorb sunlight, warming the Martian atmosphere in their vicinity. Warm pockets of air and then flow toward colder regions, generating winds. Strong winds lift more grit off the ground, which, in plow, heats the atmosphere, raising more than current of air and kicking up more dust.
These dust storms can pose serious risks to robots on the Martian surface. For example, NASA'south Opportunity Mars rover died subsequently being engulfed in a giant 2018 tempest, which blocked sunlight from reaching the robot's solar panels for weeks at a time.
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Mars' orbit
Mars lies further from the sun than Earth does, so the Red Planet has a longer year — 687 days compared to 365 for our home world. The two planets take similar 24-hour interval lengths, however; information technology takes about 24 hours and 40 minutes for Mars to consummate one rotation around its axis, versus 24 hours for World.
The axis of Mars, like Earth'southward, is tilted in relation to the sun. This means that like Earth, the corporeality of sunlight falling on certain parts of the Red Planet can vary widely during the year, giving Mars seasons.
Mars' orbit: Quick facts
— Average distance from the lord's day : 141,633,260 miles (227,936,640 km). By comparison: 1.524 times that of Earth.
— Perihelion (closest solar approach): 128,400,000 miles (206,600,000 km). Past comparison: i.404 times that of Globe.
— Aphelion (farthest distance from the sun): 154,900,000 miles (249,200,000 km). By comparison: ane.638 times that of Earth.
However, the seasons that Mars experiences are more than extreme than Globe's because the Ruddy Planet's elliptical, oval-shaped orbit around the sun is more elongated than that of any of the other major planets. When Mars is closest to the lord's day, its southern hemisphere is tilted toward our star, giving the planet a short, warm summer, while the northern hemisphere experiences a brusk, cold wintertime. When Mars is farthest from the sunday, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the lord's day, giving it a long, balmy summer, while the southern hemisphere experiences a long, cold winter.
The tilt of the Scarlet Planet'due south axis swings wildly over time because information technology's not stabilized past a large moon, such as Earth's is. This situation has led to different climates on the Martian surface throughout its history. A 2017 study suggests that the changing tilt likewise influenced the release of methane into Mars' temper, causing temporary warming periods that immune h2o to flow.
Size, composition and structure
Mars is 4,220 miles (6,791 km) in diameter — far smaller than Earth, which is 7,926 miles (12,756 km) broad. The Scarlet Planet is virtually 10% as massive as our abode world, with a gravitational pull 38% as strong. (A 100-pound person here on World would weigh just 62 pounds on Mars, merely their mass would be the same on both planets.)
Atmospheric composition (past volume)
Co-ordinate to NASA, the atmosphere of Mars is 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, i.6% argon, 0.xiii% oxygen and 0.08% carbon monoxide, with minor amounts of h2o, nitrogen oxide, neon, hydrogen-deuterium-oxygen, krypton and xenon.
Magnetic field
Mars lost its global magnetic field most 4 billion years ago, leading to the stripping of much of its atmosphere by the solar wind. Only there are regions of the planet's crust today that can be at least x times more than strongly magnetized than annihilation measured on Earth, which suggests those regions are remnants of an ancient global magnetic field.
Chemic limerick
Mars likely has a solid core composed of iron, nickel and sulfur. The drapery of Mars is probably similar to Earth'due south in that information technology is equanimous mostly of peridotite, which is fabricated up primarily of silicon, oxygen, iron and magnesium. The crust is probably largely made of the volcanic rock basalt, which is as well common in the crusts of the Earth and the moon, although some crustal rocks, especially in the northern hemisphere, may be a form of andesite, a volcanic rock that contains more silica than basalt does.
Internal construction
NASA's InSight lander has been probing the Martian interior since touching down near the planet's equator in November 2018. InSight measures and characterizes marsquakes, and mission squad members are tracking wobbles in Mars' tilt over time by precisely tracking the lander's position on the planet'south surface.
These data accept revealed key insights well-nigh Mars' internal structure. For example, InSight squad members recently estimated that the planet'southward core is 1,110 to 1,300 miles (i,780 to two,080 km) wide. InSight's observations likewise suggest that Mars' crust is 14 to 45 miles (24 and 72 km) thick, on average, with the mantle making up the rest of the planet'southward (non-atmospheric) volume.
For comparison, Earth's core is about four,400 miles (7,100 km) broad — bigger than Mars itself — and its mantle is roughly ane,800 miles (2,900 km) thick. Earth has 2 kinds of crust, continental and oceanic, whose average thicknesses are almost 25 miles (40 km) and five miles (viii km), respectively.
Mars' moons
The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were discovered past American astronomer Asaph Hall over the course of a week in 1877. Hall had most given upwards his search for a moon of Mars, but his wife, Angelina, urged him on. He discovered Deimos the next night, and Phobos vi days later on that. He named the moons after the sons of the Greek state of war god Ares — Phobos means "fear," while Deimos ways "rout."
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Both Phobos and Deimos are plain made of carbon-rich rock mixed with ice and are covered in dust and loose rocks. They are tiny side by side to Earth's moon, and are irregularly shaped, since they lack enough gravity to pull themselves into a more than circular class. The widest Phobos gets is about 17 miles (27 km), and the widest Deimos gets is roughly 9 miles (xv km). (World's moon is 2,159 miles, or three,475 km, broad.)
Both Mars moons are pockmarked with craters from meteor impacts. The surface of Phobos also possesses an intricate pattern of grooves, which may exist cracks that formed later on the touch created the moon's largest crater — a pigsty nigh 6 miles (10 km) wide, or nearly half the width of Phobos. The two Martian satellites e'er show the same face to their parent planet, simply equally our moon does to Earth.
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It remains uncertain how Phobos and Deimos were born. They may exist former asteroids that were captured by Mars' gravitational pull, or they may have formed in orbit effectually Mars at roughly the same time the planet came into being. Ultraviolet low-cal reflected from Phobos provides strong show that the moon is a captured asteroid ,according to astronomers at the University of Padova in Italy.
Phobos is gradually spiraling toward Mars, cartoon about vi feet (i.8 meters) closer to the Ruby-red Planet each century. Within fifty one thousand thousand years, Phobos will either smash into Mars or break up and form a band of debris effectually the planet.
Enquiry & exploration
The first person to observe Mars with a telescope was Galileo Galilei, in 1610. In the century following, astronomers discovered the planet's polar ice caps. In the 19th and 20th centuries, some researchers — nigh famously, Percival Lowell — believed they saw a network of long, directly canals on Mars that hinted at a possible civilization. However, these sightings proved to be mistaken interpretations of geological features.
A number of Martian rocks take fallen to Earth over the eons, providing scientists a rare opportunity to study pieces of Mars without having to leave our planet. One of the most controversial finds was Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) — a Martian meteorite that, according to a 1996 written report, likely contains tiny fossils and other evidence of Mars life. Other researchers cast doubt on this hypothesis, just the team backside the famous 1996 report have held house to their interpretation, and the debate near ALH84001 continues today.
In 2018, a separate meteorite study found that organic molecules — the carbon-containing building blocks of life, although non necessarily bear witness of life itself — could have formed on Mars through bombardment-like chemical reactions.
Robotic spacecraft began observing Mars in the 1960s, with the United States launching Mariner 4 in 1964 and Mariners 6 and vii in 1969. Those early missions revealed Mars to exist a barren earth, without any signs of the life or civilizations people such as Lowell had imagined there. In 1971, Mariner 9 orbited Mars, mapping well-nigh fourscore% of the planet and discovering its volcanoes and large canyons.
The Soviet Marriage also launched numerous Red Planet spacecraft in the 1960s and early 1970s, but most of those missions failed. Mars ii (1971) and Mars 3 (1971) operated successfully simply were unable to map the surface due to grit storms. NASA'due south Viking i lander touched downward on the surface of Mars in 1976, pulling off the first successful landing on the Red Planet. Its twin, Viking 2, landed six weeks later in a unlike Mars region.
The Viking landers took the first close-up pictures of the Martian surface but found no strong show for life. Again, however, there has been fence: Gil Levin, master investigator of the Vikings' Labeled Release life-detection experiment, forever maintained that the landers spied evidence of microbial metabolism in the Martian clay. (Levin died in July 2021, at the age of 97.)
The next two arts and crafts to successfully accomplish the Red Planet were Mars Pathfinder, a lander, and Mars Global Surveyor, an orbiter, both NASA craft that launched in 1996. A small-scale robot onboard Pathfinder named Sojourner — the first wheeled rover ever to explore the surface of another planet — ventured over the planet's surface, analyzing rocks for 95 Globe days.
In 2001, NASA launched the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which discovered vast amounts of water ice beneath the Martian surface, by and large in the upper 3 feet (1 meter). It remains uncertain whether more than water lies underneath, since the probe cannot come across water any deeper.
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In 2003, Mars passed closer to World than it had someday in the past threescore,000 years. That same twelvemonth, NASA launched two golf-cart-sized rovers, nicknamed Spirit and Opportunity, which explored different regions of the Martian surface after touching down in January 2004. Both rovers found many signs that water once flowed on the planet's surface.
Spirit and Opportunity were originally tasked with iii-month surface missions, simply both kept roving for far longer than that. NASA didn't declare Spirit dead until 2011, and Opportunity was still going strong until that dust storm hit in mid-2018.
In 2008, NASA sent a lander called Phoenix to the far northern plains of Mars. The robot confirmed the presence of h2o ice in the near subsurface, among other finds.
In 2011, NASA'due south Mars Scientific discipline Laboratory mission sent the Curiosity rover to investigate Mars' by potential to host life. Not. long after landing inside the Crimson Planet'due south Gale Crater in August 2012, the auto-sized robot determined that the area hosted a long-lived, potentially habitable lake-and-stream system in the ancient past. Curiosity has also found complex organic molecules and documented seasonal fluctuations in methane concentrations in the atmosphere.
NASA has ii other orbiters working around the planet — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Development), which arrived at Mars in 2006 and 2014, respectively. The European Infinite Agency (ESA) likewise has two spacecraft orbiting the planet: Mars Express and the Trace Gas Orbiter.
In September 2014, Republic of india's Mars Orbiter Mission also reached the Red Planet, making it the fourth nation to successfully enter orbit effectually Mars.
In November 2018, NASA landed a stationary craft chosen Mars InSight on the surface. As noted to a higher place, InSight is investigating Mars' internal structure and composition, primarily by measuring and characterizing marsquakes.
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NASA launched the life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance rover in July 2020. Perseverance, which is about the aforementioned size every bit Curiosity, landed on the flooring of Mars' Jezero Crater in Feb 2021 along with a tiny, engineering-demonstrating helicopter known as Ingenuity.
As of September 2021, Ingenuity had made more than than a dozen flights on Mars, showing that aerial exploration of the planet is feasible. Perseverance documented the iv-pound (i.8 kg) chopper'southward early on flights, and then began focusing in earnest on its own science mission. The big rover has already nerveless several samples, role of a big cache that will exist brought back to Earth, perchance equally soon as 2031, by a articulation NASA-ESA campaign.
July 2020 also saw the launch of the United Arab Emirates' get-go Mars mission, called Promise, and China'southward first fully homegrown Mars effort, Tianwen 1. The Promise orbiter arrived at Mars in Feb 2021 and is studying the planet'southward atmosphere, weather and climate.
Tianwen 1, which consists of an orbiter and a lander-rover duo, also reached Mars orbit in February 2021. The landed chemical element touched down a few months later on, in May. The Tianwen 1 rover, called Zhurong, shortly rolled downwardly the landing platform's ramp and began exploring the Martian surface.
ESA is also working on a Mars rover, as part of its ExoMars collaboration with Russia. This robot, named Rosalind Franklin, was supposed to launch in mid-2020, only parachute problems and other problems delayed the liftoff until the next opportunity, in 2022. (Mars and World align properly for interplanetary missions only one time every 26 months.) Rosalind Franklin volition search for signs of past Mars life, among other tasks. The robot will utilise a drill to go deep into the Ruby Planet, collecting soil samples from about two meters (6.5 feet) underground.
Lost missions to Mars
Mars is far from an easy planet to reach. NASA, Russia, the European Infinite Agency, China, Japan and the Soviet Matrimony collectively lost many spacecraft in their quest to explore the Red Planet. Notable examples include (just are not limited to):
1992 — NASA'southward Mars Observer
1996 — Russia's Mars 96
1998 — NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter, Nihon's Nozomi
1999 — NASA'southward Mars Polar Lander
2003 — ESA'southward Beagle 2 lander
2011 — Russia's Fobus-Grunt mission to Phobos, with the Chinese Yinghuo-1 orbiter
2016 — ESA'due south Schiaparelli test lander
Future homo missions
Robots aren't the simply ones getting a ticket to Mars. A workshop group of scientists from government agencies, academia and industry have adamant that a NASA-led manned mission to Mars should exist possible by the 2030s.
In late 2017, the administration of President Donald Trump directed NASA to transport people back to the moon before going to Mars. NASA is working on this goal via a plan called Artemis, which aims to institute a sustainable, long-term human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. The lessons and skills learned from this lunar effort volition help pave the way for putting boots on Mars, NASA officials have said.
Robotic missions to the Reddish Planet have seen much success in the past few decades, but it remains a considerable challenge to go people to Mars. With electric current rocket engineering science, information technology would take at least six months for people to travel to Mars. Red Planet explorers would therefore be exposed for long stretches to deep-infinite radiation and to microgravity, which has devastating effects on the human body. Performing activities in the moderate gravity on Mars could prove extremely difficult after many months in microgravity. Research into the furnishings of microgravity continues on the International Space Station.
NASA isn't the only entity with crewed Mars aspirations. Other nations, including China and Russia, have also announced their goals for sending humans to the Red Planet.
And Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has long stressed that he established the company back in 2002 primarily to help humanity settle the Red Planet. SpaceX is currently developing and testing a fully reusable deep-space transportation organization called Starship, which Musk believes is the breakthrough needed to get people to Mars at long last.
Additional resource
Explore Mars in more detail with NASA'southward Mars Exploration Program (opens in new tab). Read about Mars' climate in more detail with the National Weather Service (opens in new tab). Transport your name (opens in new tab) to Mars on NASA's side by side flying to the Red Planet.
Bibliography
NASA. Mars fact sheet. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from www.nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html (opens in new tab)
NASA. Mars. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from www.solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/ (opens in new tab)
NASA. NASA Mars Exploration. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://mars.nasa.gov/ (opens in new tab)
NASA. Ship your proper noun to Mars. NASA. Retrieved July eleven, 2022, from world wide web.mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/future (opens in new tab)
U.s. Department of Commerce, Due north. O. A. A. The planet Mars. National Weather condition Service. Retrieved July eleven, 2022, from world wide web.weather.gov/fsd/mars (opens in new tab)
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What Is The Fourth Planet,
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