This article is from the series "The Solar System" where we will be sharing interesting facts about everything, from the origin of the Solar System to the mysterious massive planet 9. Please follow our social media accounts to get regular updates.
Mars ( ♂︎ , मंगल ), the fourth planet of the Solar System can be called the most behaved planet after Earth. Unlike extreme conditions on Mercury and Venus and unavailability of a solid surface on the giant planets, Mars is the only nearby place we can think of having a colony. It sounds nice but in reality, Mars is still a very hostile planet. A colony may be a dream of far future but we may soon have few humans there.
Here are some interesting facts about our friendly neighbour Mars:
The Greeks named this planet as Ares, the Greek God of War. Then, Roman changed the name of the planet as their God of War: Mars
————————————
Mars is the second smallest planet in the Solar System after Mercury
————————————
The Maps by Christiaan Huygens contain terrain features of Mars
————————————
The rotation on Axis (Solar Day) by Mars takes 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds
————————————
Phobos gets closer to Mars by about 2 m every hundred years. It is predicted that within 30 to 50 million years, it will either collide with the planet or break up into a planetary ring
————————————
————————————
The boundary between the two regions is quite complex in places. One distinctive type of topography is called Fretted terrain which contains flat-floored valleys having walls about a mile high
————————————
The water in Southern cap is enough to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 m, if melted
————————————
However, the Borealis Basin is currently not recognised as an impact basin by IAU. It is one of the flattest areas in the Solar System having an elliptical shape
————————————
The central peak of Rheasilvia (impact crater) on the asteroid Vesta of Asteroid Belt is the tallest mountain in the Solar System.
————————————
Observations since the 1950s have shown that the chance of planet-wide dust storms in a Martian year is approximately one in three
————————————
————————————
Because of lower gravity, the atmosphere is about 10.8 km in height as compared to Earth‘s 6 km
Appendix: Magnetosphere
————————————
The thin Martian atmosphere prohibits the existence of liquid water at the surface of Mars
————————————
Even if such microscopic life on Mars will be detected, the lifeforms likely reside far below the surface, outside of the Martian rover’s reach
————————————
When least favourably positioned, it can be lost in Sun’s glare for months at a time. At its most favourable times, at 15 – 17 years intervals, late in July and late September, a lot of surface details can be seen with the telescope. Even at low magnification, polar ice caps are especially noticeable
Appendix: apparent magnitude
————————————
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan was launched by Indian Space Research Organisation on 5th November 2013. It was inserted into Martian Orbit on 24th September 2014. Designed only for six months, the spacecraft is still in good health and continues to work nominally
As of 2019, SpaceX (founded by Elon Musk) is funding and developing a series of Mars-bound cargo flights with the Starship and Super Heavy stages of the Big Falcon Rocket as early as 2022, to be followed by the first crewed flight to Mars on the next launch window in 2024
————————————
Source: Wikipedia
You can read the whole series ‘The Solar System‘
Please feel free to share your thoughts ‘here’ about this article. Don’t forget to mention the article name in the subject line.
Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
