Some interesting facts:-
- Mars is that the fourth planet from the Sun and last of the terrestrial planets and is around 227,940,000 kilometer from the Sun.
- Mars was famous to the traditional Greeks as Ares, their god of war. Chinese astronomers call Mars the “fire star” whereas ancient Egyptian priests called it “Her Desher” which mean “the red one”.
- The land of Mars and Earth is similar. Despite Mars being just 10% the mass of Earth, it actually has a similar land because water covers about 70% of Earth’s surface. The gravity of Mars is about 37% the gravity on Earth. This means that on Mars you could jump 3x higher than you could on Earth.
- 16 of the 39 Mars missions have been successful. USSR’s Marsnik 1 which was launched in 1960 was the first mission.
- The tallest mountain and volcano of the solar system is on Mars. Olympus Mons is a 21 km high and 600 km diameter volcano that was formed billions of years ago. Scientists have plenty of recent proof of volcanic lava which suggests Olympus Mons may still be active.
- Mars large dust storms the largest in our solar system that can exist for many months, this is due to the elliptical shape of the Mars orbit path around the Sun.
- It takes Mars 687 Earth days to complete the Sun orbit.
- Mars has seasons like Earth, however, they last twice as long as earth. because Mars is tilted on its axis by about 25.19 degrees, which is similar to the axial tilt of the Earth.
- The orbit of Mars is the most eccentric in the eight planets. it means it has the least circular orbit path in all the planets.
- Mars does not have a magnetic field.
