MARS: The Red Planet | Information And Facts

Mars:

Mars that is often abbreviated as red planet is the fourth planet from the sun and is the seventh-largest planet of our solar system.

Mars's Profile:

Distance Fron Sun: 227.9 million km
Mass: 6.39 × 10^23 kg
Radius: 3,389.5 km

Physical Characteristics :

The bright rust colour Mars is known for is due to iron-rich minerals in its loose dust and rock covering its surface. According to NASA, the iron minerals oxidize, or rust, causing the soil to look red.
Mars rotates on its axis every 24.6 Earth hours, defining the length of a Martian day, which is called a sol (short for “solar day”). Mars’s axis of rotation is tilted 25.2 degrees relative to the plane of the planet’s orbit around the sun, which helps give Mars seasons similar to those on Earth.
But for several reasons, seasons on Mars are different from those on Earth. For one, Mars is on average about 50 per cent farther from the sun than Earth is, with an average orbital distance of 142 million miles. This means that it takes Mars longer to complete a single orbit, stretching out its year and the lengths of its seasons. On Mars, a year lasts 669.6 sols or 687 Earth days, and an individual season can last up to 194 sols, or just over 199 Earth days.

Mars is much colder than Earth, in large part due to its greater distance from the sun. The average temperature is about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius), although it can vary from minus 195 F (minus 125 C) near the poles during the winter to as much as 70 F (20 C) at midday near the equator.
The primary driver of modern Martian geology is its atmosphere, which is mostly made of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon. By Earth standards, the air is preposterously thin; air pressure atop Mount Everest is about 50 times higher than it is at the Martian surface. Despite the thin air, Martian breezes can gust up to 60 miles an hour, kicking up dust that fuels huge dust storms and massive fields of alien sand dunes.

Mars also lacks an active plate tectonic system, the geologic engine that drives our active Earth, and is also missing a planetary magnetic field. The absence of this protective barrier makes it easier for the sun’s high-energy particles to strip away the red planet’s atmosphere, which may help explain why Mars’s atmosphere is now so thin. But in the ancient past—up until about 4.12 to 4.14 billion years ago—Mars seems to have had an inner dynamo powering a planet-wide magnetic field. What shut down the Martian dynamo? Scientists are still trying to figure out.

Mars also has the largest volcanoes in the solar system, Olympus Mons being one of them. The massive volcano, which is about 370 miles (600 km) in diameter, is wide enough to cover the state of New Mexico. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with slopes that rise gradually like those of Hawaiian volcanoes, and was created by eruptions of lavas that flowed for long distances before solidifying. Mars also has many other kinds of volcanic landforms, from small, steep-sided cones to enormous plains coated in hardened lava. Some minor eruptions might still occur on the planet.

Structure of mars:

Scientists think that on average, the Martian core is between 1,800 and 2,400 miles in diameter (3,000 and 4,000 km), its mantle is about 900 to 1,200 miles (5,400 to 7,200 km) wide and its crust is about 30 miles (50 km) thick. The core is surrounded by a silicate mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet, but it appears to be dormant. Besides silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the Martian crust are iron, magnesium, aluminium, calcium, and potassium.

Some facts about Mars:

• The tallest mountain known in the solar system is on Mars.
• Pieces of Mars have been found on Earth.
• Mars has seasons like Earth, but they last twice as long.
• The orbit of Mars is the most eccentric of the eight planets. This means it is the least circular orbit path of the planets.
• Mars does not have a magnetic field. 

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