Mars!! WOW,it sure is neat. Mars now is more interesting to know about than ever. That is because of the Pathfinder Mission that happened on Mars. It was launched into space programed to turn off it's rockets when it was floating over Mars. Then it inflates air bags all over itself which made it look kind of like a ball of airbags. When it landed it opened up into a flower like machine platform. Then it opened like growing flower petals when it is growing. A machine car which is a rover named Sojourner came out of the Pathfinder. This had a video camera on it. With this machine scientist have been able to learn a lot about Mars. Unfortunately after about 34 days it turned off. The scientist were still happy because it was only supposed to work for about 13 days. They think it broke because it was out of batteries, but it had solar panels for just that purpose. Perhaps because of the cold, the solar panels broke.
Do you want more information or pictures of Mars? Here are a couple of NASA web Site's-- Click here.
The distance from Mars to the sun is about 141,600,000 miles away (228 million Kilometeters). The distance to the earth is about 100,600,000 miles away. Another fact is the diameter of Mars is 4,223 miles around. The weather is always very cold, the weather is from -225 degrees to 63 degrees F. The length of year is about 1 earth-year and 10 1/2 months. One rotation period is about 24 hours, 37 minutes, and 28 seconds. It has two satellites and Mars has about 15 other missions not including the Pathfinder Mission which is the only one that landed on Mars. The satellites look like two tiny shaped, potato-shaped moons called Phobos and Deimos.
The other missions to Mars are the Viking 1&2 missions, the Mariner (1through 9) Missions,and a few others. There are many other flights to Mars, but we will not be talking about them because they didn't come from America. Its volume is about 10 km. The atmosphere of Mars is covered with carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, oxygen, carbon monoxide, neon, krypton, xenon, and water vapor. Seasons on Mars cause changes on the polar cap. During a Mars winter, the polar cap of ice becomes larger because of the much colder weather. The polar cap is smaller in the summer because of the warmer weather. Mars's polar caps are bigger than earth's because Mars's temperature is always very low. Infact they think the senter core froze there so it would do now good to dig into the ground there to get hotter. The mass of Mars only about one-tenth of earth's mass and because of that the gravity isn't that strong.
Mars was also in mythology. Mars was named by the Romans. Mars was the god of war in Roman Mythology. He was also the father of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. March is named after Mars.
Scientific information is that some scientists think there might used to be some kind of life form because of the little oxegen on Mars. An error that scientist made was that they thought there was canals in Mars. If there really were canals then there had to be other life forms in the universe to make them. They thought that because a Italian astronomer named Giovanni V. Schiaparelli said he discovered some lines in the dark spots of Mars that he called channels. When the word channels was transalated to English the word was changed to canals. Now all astronomers know that they were just illusions. On Mars there is a brick-colored mineral dust called limonite. It covered 2/3 of the planets surface and because the dust was dry it made the most of Mars kind of like a desert. It is also found in some deserts of the earth. Since there is this red brickish rust-brown color on Mars the planet has been nicknamed "The Red Planet".
This Rock is Called Yogi. The Mars Navigator got stuck on it for a few hours.
Researched by Carver ThinkQuest member, Ben. Return to Journey Through the Solar System's Main Menu
For educational use. Not for commercial use: Images provided through the courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.