MARS

• Characteristics
• Properties
• Layer
 Size

Circumference Diameter Circumference

Mars is also smaller than Earth. Its diameter
at the equator is 6,794 kilometres, while
Earth’s is 12,756 kilometres. If you measure
Mars’s diameter from pole to pole, it is
6,752 km, compared to Earth’s 12,720 km.
These slight differences mean that both
planets are not quite perfectly spherical,
and are slightly oblate. This slight flattening
is due to the rotation of each planet on its
 Mass & Gravity

Gravity Mass
Mars is an Earth-like planet in many
ways, but it does vary in size and
gravitational pull. From spacecraft and
telescope observations, planetary
scientists know that it smaller and less
massive than Earth. Its mass is 0.107
Earth masses and its gravity is about 62
percent less than Earth’s gravitational
tug. That means you would weigh less
 Rotation

Day Rotation & Tilt

The length of a Mars day is

slightly longer than an Earth
day. The Red Planet takes 24
hours and 40 minutes to turn
once on its axis. By
comparison, Earth’s takes 23
hours and 56 minutes.
 Orbit

Distance Year
from
Sun
Mars’s year is also longer than Earth’s. That’s
because it takes 687 days to make one trip
around the Sun, as opposed to Earth’s
365.25-day-long year. The longer year is due
to Mars’s distance from the Sun, and the
planet has the second most eccentric orbit of
any body in the solar system. At its most
distant (at aphelion), Mars lies 249.23 million
At perihelion (its closest approach), Mars lies
only 206.62 million km away. On average, Mars
is about 227.9 million km from the Sun. For
comparison, we often say Earth is about 150
million km away from the Sun. In its orbit, our
planet travels out to 152.1 million kilometres
from the Sun and comes as close as 147 million
km.
Atmosphere &
Temperature

Atmosphere Temperature Weather

The Martian atmosphere is the very definition of “thin air”.
Its atmospheric pressure is about a hundred times less
than Earth’s. Future Mars explorers will not be able to
breathe Martian air because it’s almost completely
carbon dioxide with a few traces of nitrogen, oxygen, and
water vapor. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the
temperatures on Mars never get much warmer than 20 C
at noon on the equator. It’s more likely to be below
around most of the time, with wintertime measurements
as low as -153 C in polar wintertime.
Two missions to Mars — the MAVEN and MOM
spacecraft — are studying the atmosphere to find clues
to why Mars’s atmosphere changed. Evidence suggests
it was much warmer, wetter and thicker in the past. At
some point, the atmosphere began to escape to space,
and the Mars surface water began to disappear.
 Interior

Composition Density
Mars is known as a rocky, “terrestrial” planet, which
makes it very similar to Earth. Recent data from the
Mars orbiting missions show that the Red Planet has a
solid iron core, which helps generate the planet’s weak
magnetic field. Other modern studies of the planet
suggest that the crust of Mars may have some simple
plates riding atop a solid mantle. Long-ago plate
motions are thought to be what began the formation of
Clearly there has been volcanic activity in the past,
eruptions that built Olympus Mons and the other
volcanoes that rise up from the rusty red surface.
Scientists do not know if there is an active
volcanism deep beneath the surface. Constant
volcanic activity from the three largest volcanoes on
Mars built up a huge region called the Tharsis Bulge
(or Tharsis Rise). This region has roughly the same
mass as the dwarf planet Ceres, and it may well
have affected the may well have affected the
planet’s rotation rate. It has also been implicated in
Mars’s plate tectonics and possibly also changes in
its climate.
 Surface

Surface Area
Mars shows us a dry, dusty, rocky surface. The
southern half of the planet is much more rugged, with
many more craters and highlands. The northern half
of Mars has more smooth basins and what appear to
be dry lakebeds and sinuous riverbeds. This
difference in surface characteristics is called the
Martian dichotomy. Impact craters account for part of
the dichotomy, and planetary scientists suspect that
long-gone oceans and lakes explain the smoothness
have carved out interesting terrain in other places.
There are ice caps at both poles that grow and
shrink with the change of seasons.