Mars Facts

Planet: Mars

1: - Mars is red because its soil is very oxidized (iron oxide).

2: - The brightest stars in the night sky are not really stars, but the planets Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Mercury.

3: - The Martian dust storms that occur every two or four years on Mars are so powerful that they can cover the entire planet with dust for months.

4: - The Martian "day" is only a little longer than a day on Earth. On Mars, one day lasts 24 hours, 37 minutes, 23 seconds, while on Earth, one day lasts 23 hours 56 minutes, 04 seconds.

5: - Scientists have gathered many evidences that suggest that Mars was once significantly more habitable than it is today, but scientists are still far from responding if there were ever living organisms on Mars or not.

6: - Mars is rich in water ice, in fact, NASA in 2007 stated that the volume of water ice in the ice cap of the South Pole, if it melted, would be enough to cover the entire planetary surface at a depth of 11 meters.

7: - The deepest surface point on Mars is Hellas, about 3 km deep.

8: - Sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach Earth, 12 minutes and 47 seconds to reach Mars, and 5.5 hours to reach Pluto.

9: - The highest mountain in the solar system is the Olympus Mons volcano, on Mars at an altitude of approximately 16 miles, three times the height of Mount Everest. It covers an area almost the size of France, and has lava flows that are so young that some scientists think it might still be active. Olympus Mons has a cliff at its outer edge that rises to 5 miles high.

10: - Mars is full of craters, currently more than 43,000 craters with a diameter of 5 km or more have been found.

11: - Methane is produced on Mars and changes from one season to another. The gas was first detected in 2003 when a 19,000 ton plume was detected. Methane is produced by geological activity or biological activity.

12: - It is known that life exists only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought could be fossils of microscopic living things on a rock of Mars.

13: - According to scientists, gold exists on Mars, Mercury and Venus.

14: - The dry riverbeds show that Mars probably once had water on its surface. Sometimes there is ice at the poles and maybe water underground.

15: - The moon of Mars, Phobos, orbits the red planet so fast that it completes 3 orbits on a Martian day.

16: - The most difficult problem for any future human mission to Mars is to guarantee reliable radio communication because the Sun often blocks communication between Earth and Mars.

17: - Most of the surface of Mars is mainly composed of basalt. Basalt is black and fine-grained extrusive volcanic rock.

18: - In winter, the temperatures at the poles of Mars can drop to -140 ° C (-220 degrees Fahrenheit), these temperatures are called so even the carbon dioxide freezes.

19: - The atmosphere on Mars contains traces of oxygen, but the most dominant ingredient in the atmosphere of Mars is carbon dioxide (about 95% share).

20: - Many recent studies believe that Mars was hit by a body the size of Pluto about four billion years ago. The direct result of this coup was the Borealis basin that covers 40% of the planet.