Things about Mars

What we know about the Red Planet

Mars is the fourth planet in our Solar system, it's also called the 'red planet' because of the reddish ochre hue it gives off. Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Both of them are small and irregularly shaped. Mars has intrigued many people in recent times because of many substantial reasons. It's smaller than the Earth, approximately as big as Mercury. The mean distance of Mars from the sun is 228 million kilometers (140 million miles). Mars takes 24 hours and 37 minutes to complete one rotation; that's awfully close to what Earth has. However, it takes 687 earth days to complete one revolution around the sun. This might become a problem if we were to terraform mars. Mars has a rocky (terrestrial) surface, plus the atmospheric phenomenon can be seen from the telescopes on Earth. Many spacecraft have also observed Mars closely and have rendered it to be very similar to the Earth. It has clouds, winds, seasonal weather patterns, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and other familiar features. Mars, although, has a far thinner atmosphere than the Earth, consisting of: 95% CO2, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, 0.13% oxygen, and some H2O. This dramatically lessens the amount of heat trapped near its surface. That's why the average temperature on Mars is -63℃, max being 20℃ and min being -140℃. Liquid water cannot exist due to the low atmospheric pressure, except for the two polar ice caps. They are made largely of water and dry ice. The south polar cap, if melted, can cover the entire surface of Mars in a depth of 11 meters of water. 

A very interesting fact about Mars is that it houses the largest and highest mountain in the solar system "Olympus Mons". Its height is 21.9 kilometers and the base is around 590 kilometers across. The terrain not only goes up but also goes down. "Valles Marineris" is an iconic canyon system just to the southeast of Olympus Mons that stretches across 2500 miles and goes 4.3 miles into the surface. Talking about the surface, Mars has a crust that's primarily made up of iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium.  It is 50 kilometers deep on average. The dense iron and nickel mars core is surrounded by a silicate mantle. 

There is a theory that clues: billions of years ago, Mars was even more Earth-like than today, with a denser and warmer atmosphere. It had much more water, rivers, lakes, and even floods. But now it's a sterile frozen desert. However, up-close images of Mars' craters suggest that there might be possible water lakes under the south polar cap and water may still be liquid there. It has been considered the most hospitable planet in the solar system after Earth. Some say that the "asteroid" that killed dinosaurs was actually a human spaceship from mars.

There were many Mars missions conducted over the years by some countries. the first-ever space shuttle to visit mars was the "Mariner 4" of NASA in 1964. It made a very close approach to the planet. "Viking1" was the first spaceship to successfully land on the Martian surface in 1976. In 2014, ISRO launched the "Mangalyaan" that's still orbiting Mars. By this, India became the fourth country to get to Mars. "Mars" is a very huge topic and there is so much scope for further information.