Mars
CosMos Astronomy - Southern Hemisphere
"One thousand times pale sol has traced
Her arc above my head;
But no ball of fire shines in these eyes, instead
A wan and wasted disc,
A coin of faded gold, the brutal cold
Of Mars – that chills me to my core –
Too deep for Sol’s meagre heat to ever hope to thaw,
And so I wake from sleep each dawn to find
A fine-stitched cloak of hoarfrost covers me."
One Thousand Sunsets - Stuart Atkinson
MARS DATA:
Distance from Sun:
Aphelion 249,209,300 km
Perihelion 206,669,000 km
Equatorial Diameter:
6,800km
Mass:
6.4185×1023 kg
(0.107 Earths)
Composition:
95.32% carbon dioxide
2.7% nitrogen
1.6% argon
0.13% oxygen
0.08% carbon monoxide
Other trace elements
Moons:
2
Orbital Period:
686.95 days
Rotational Period:
24hr 37.34min
Apparent magnitude:
+1.6 to -3.0
Angular diameter:
3.5" to 25.1"
MAJOR MOONS (Diameter)
Phobos (26.8 x 22.4 x 18.4km)
Deimos (15.0 x 12.2 x 15.4km)
Both moons discovered by A. Hall in 1877
Details of rise and set as well as relevant monthly information can be found on the Sky This Month page.
Latest News on Curiosity Mars Rover.
Videos:
Olympus Mons East Escarpment (2004) - This image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, shows the eastern scarp of the Olympus Mons volcano on Mars. The HRSC obtained this image on November 23, 2004 during orbit 1089 with a ground resolution of approximately 11 metres per pixel. The image is centred at 17.5° North and 230.5° East.
ESA Mission: MARS Express - Hebes Chasma - Hebes Chasma is an enclosed trough, almost 8000 m deep, in Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars, where water is believed to have flowed. The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESAs Mars Express studied the area providing new pictorial clues to its history. Hebes Chasma is located at approximately 1° south and 282° east. Image data was obtained on 16 September 2005 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 m/pixel.
Phobos & Deimos - Solar system in pictures. Images of the two moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos. Taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Spirit, Opportunity, Pathfinder and Voyager.
Phobos and Deimos imaged by Mars Express - In a first, ESAs Mars Express orbiter imaged the martian moons Phobos and Deimos together on 5 November 2009. Apart from their wow factor, these unique images will help the HRSC team validate and refine existing orbit models of the two moons. (ESA footage)
Phobos slips past Jupiter. A movie of the encounter made by combining 100 images of the 1 June 2011 Phobos - Jupiter conjunction. The High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express took this sequence.
Flight in to Mariner Valley. Flight Into Mariner Valley is an exciting aerial tour of Valles Marineris, the largest, longest, and deepest canyon in the solar system. This narrated and computer-animated movie uses a new, high-resolution image of the canyon to provide hold-your-seat thrills.
Curiosity. Although NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will not leave Earth until late this year nor land on Mars until August 2012, anyone can watch those dramatic events now in an animation of the mission. Curiosity's landing will use a different method than any previous Mars landing, with the rover suspended on tethers from a rocket-backpack 'sky crane'. The animation combines detailed views of the spacecraft with scenes of real places on Mars, based on stereo images taken by earlier missions.
Cosmic Journeys: Mars World That Never Was. Did Mars long ago develop far enough for life to arise? If so, does anything still live within Mars' dusty plains, beneath its ice caps, or somewhere underground?
In 1964 the Mariner Four spacecraft flew by Mars and got a good look. What it saw looked more like the Moon than the Earth. Then, in the mid-1970's, two lander-orbiter robot teams, named Viking, went in for an even closer look. The landers tested the soil for the chemical residues of life. All the evidence from Viking told us: Mars is dead. And extremely harsh.
Links:
Nasa Mars Exploration Program - To discover the possibilities for life on Mars--past, present or our own in the future--the Mars Program has developed an exploration strategy known as "Follow the Water."
Following the water begins with an understanding of the current environment on Mars. We want to explore observed features like dry riverbeds, ice in the polar caps and rock types that only form when water is present. We want to look for hot springs, hydrothermal vents or subsurface water reserves. We want to understand if ancient Mars once held a vast ocean in the northern hemisphere as some scientists believe and how Mars may have transitioned from a more watery environment to the dry and dusty climate it has today. Searching for these answers means delving into the planet's geologic and climate history to find out how, when and why Mars underwent dramatic changes to become the forbidding, yet promising, planet we observe today.
Mars News:
7 Minutes Of Terror
It may be described as reasoned - even genius - engineering. But even the engineers who designed it agree it looks crazy. Six vehicle configurations, 76 pyrotechnic devices, 500,000 lines of code, zero margin for error.
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Longest-Lived Mars Orbiter is Back in Service
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has resumed its science observations and its role as a Mars rover's relay, thanks to a spare part that had been waiting 11 years to be put to use.
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NASA Tests Future Mars Landing Technology
Traveling 300 million miles through deep space to reach the planet Mars is difficult; successfully landing there is even harder. The process of entering the Red Planet's atmosphere and slowing down to land has been described as "seven minutes of terror."
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NASA Mars Rover Arrives at New Site on Martian Surface
After a journey of almost three years, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached the Red Planet's Endeavour crater to study rocks never seen before. On Aug. 9, the golf cart-sized rover relayed its arrival at a location named Spirit Point on the crater's rim. Opportunity drove approximately 13 miles (21 kilometers) since climbing out of the Victoria crater.
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NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars.
"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration."
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NASA's Next Mars Rover to Land at Gale Crater.
The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch late this year and land in August 2012. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle.
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NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Begins Study of Martian Crater.
The initial work of NASA's Mars rover Opportunity at its new location on Mars shows surface compositional differences from anything the robot has studied in its first 7.5 years of exploration.
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NASA Study of Clays Suggests Watery Mars Underground.
A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests Martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes.
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NASA Mars Rover Team Aims for Landing Closer to Prime Science Site
NASA has narrowed the target for its most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, which will land on the Red Planet in August. The car-sized rover will arrive closer to its ultimate destination for science operations, but also closer to the foot of a mountain slope that poses a landing hazard.
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More News... archived news about Mars, it's moons and missions.
PAST SPACECRAFT MISSIONS
Mars Global Surveyor - The people, the mission from launch to end and the science.