Since the first expeditions successfully landed on the Red Planet at the end of the 20th century, we have gradually been able to unravel many of the mysteries of Mars. Thanks to technological progress, we are learning more and more about this fascinating planet.

Here are the most interesting facts about the red planet that are sure to teach you something new.

Mars has two very different hemispheres

One of the most interesting characteristics of Mars is the strong differences between the surfaces of the northern and southern hemispheres.

The northern hemisphere consists of low-lying plains that make the planet's topography appear young, while the southern hemisphere is riddled with craters, canyons, and appears rough and ancient.

In addition, the surface in the southern part is thicker than in the north. These differences still cause a lot of controversy among experts, and no one can explain the reason for such a difference in relief.

Snow on Mars will evaporate before it reaches the surface

If a person could stand on the equator of Mars, he would feel that the lower part of his body was in a hot climate and the upper part in a cold climate. While the feet are warm at a temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, the head is cool, because at this altitude the temperature is 0 degrees. No wonder snow doesn't stand a chance.

Mars appears reddish due to rusty dust in the atmosphere

The surface of Mars contains a lot of iron. These minerals oxidize or rust, forming dust that enters the atmosphere, giving the planet a reddish hue not only up close but also from afar.

Mars is a terrestrial planet

Just like Earth, Venus and Mercury are the inner planets of the solar system.

Mars has a rocky surface and an iron core. Unlike the outer planets such as Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn, which are made of gases, the terrestrial planets have solid surfaces. They all have a similar structure - core, mantle and crust. However, the thickness of each layer varies from planet to planet.

The planet is dotted with deep craters

There are several large craters on the surface of the red planet, the largest of which is North Polar, which occupies about 40% of the surface of the entire planet. Scientists believe that the crater could have been formed as a result of a collision with a cosmic body the size of Pluto. This could have happened at an early stage in the formation of the Solar System.

The surface of Mars has very low pressure

If you decide to walk on Mars without a spacesuit, be prepared for the consequences. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is one hundred times lower than on Earth! This pressure causes almost any liquid consisting of at least half water to intensively boil and evaporate. The same fate awaits the blood of a person who enters the atmosphere of Mars without a spacesuit.

There is water on Mars

Exploration missions to Mars focus on finding evidence of life on the red planet. Much of the search is aimed at tracking the presence of liquid water, which makes life possible on Earth. Today it is known that there is water on Mars, although not quite in the form that is familiar to us. The Phoenix spacecraft has discovered a layer of ice hidden under a thin layer of soil in the polar region of Mars.

Mars may have had rivers and oceans in the past

Scientists believe that liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars a long time ago, and traces of it remained on the surface and in the soil.

In 2013, scientists reported that the Curiosity rover had done soil analysis that provided actual evidence of the presence of water on Mars in the past.

This important discovery supports the hypothesis that Mars was habitable in the past.

Valles Marineris is the longest and deepest canyon system in the Solar System.

This canyon system can easily put the Grand Canyon to shame. The length of the Marinera Canyon is 4 thousand kilometers, and the depth is four times greater than that of the Grand Canyon.

Mars has a very thin atmosphere

You won't be able to breathe Martian air because carbon dioxide makes up 95.3 percent of the entire Martian atmosphere, while oxygen makes up just 0.13 percent.

It never rains on Mars

The surface of Mars is either very hot or very cold, so liquid water cannot exist there. It turns into either ice or steam.

But it snows on Mars

True, it is not quite similar to our earthly one. This is another fun and surprising fact about Mars - the snowflakes there are made of carbon dioxide, not water. Snowflakes are so tiny that we would perceive them as fog.

Giant sandstorms are raging on Mars

One sandstorm can cover the entire planet in dust and last for months.

Want to weigh less? Let's go to Mars!

On the surface of Mars, you can jump three times higher than on Earth, unless you are wearing a heavy spacesuit, of course. The surface gravity of Mars is about 37% less than that of Earth.

No one knows for sure who discovered Mars

The discovery of Mars cannot be accurately attributed to one person or culture.

There are suggestions that the ancient Egyptians discovered it in 1570 BC. e. However, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus is also often called the discoverer of Mars, since it was he who first observed it through a telescope.

There are also four seasons on Mars

Both Mars and Earth are tilted on their axis. Mars's axial tilt is almost exactly the same as Earth's, so Mars also has winter, spring, summer and autumn, although each of the red planet's seasons lasts twice as long.

A year on Mars is almost twice as long as on Earth

A solar day on the red planet lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds, almost the same as on ours. A year on Mars, however, lasts almost twice as long - 687 days.

Mars has two moons

Mars has two satellites - Phobos and Deimos. Like our Moon, they are tidally locked and show only one side to Mars. These moons are very small in size and may be asteroids.

The tallest volcano on Mars is three times taller than Everest

The tallest volcano on Mars, named Olympus Mons, or Olympus Mons, is the tallest mountain in the entire solar system. It rises 25 kilometers above the surrounding plains. The foot of the volcano could occupy the entire state of Arizona.

There are pieces of Mars on Earth

Despite the fact that no rover has ever returned from an expedition to the red planet, there are still pieces of Mars on Earth. How? Several meteorites discovered in Antarctica broke off from Mars because the composition of the rocks is consistent with the Martian soil and atmosphere.

Missions to Mars cost a lot of money

This fact in itself will not surprise anyone. Of course, sending an expensive spacecraft to a neighboring planet cannot be a cheap pleasure. However, look at the numbers. At 1970s price levels, the Viking mission cost the United States about a billion dollars.

The budget for the Curiosity rover, one of the last Martian scientific laboratories, is an almost unaffordable two and a half billion dollars. This is the most expensive space mission to date.

The flight to Mars and back will take more than a year

If you are planning to join an expedition to Mars, prepare for a long flight. It will take you approximately eight months to reach the surface of the red planet, and another eight to return home to Earth. This is not a transatlantic flight or a train ride along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Traveling to Mars (56 million kilometers) at the speed of a car or train would take almost a lifetime - 66 years.

1. Mars has a rotation period and seasons similar to those on Earth, but its climate is much colder and drier than Earth’s. Temperatures on the planet range from −153 °C at the poles in winter to over +20 °C at the equator at midday. According to NASA, the average temperature of Mars is −63 °C.

2. The rotation period of the planet is 24 hours 37 minutes 22.7 seconds.

3. The radius of the equator of Mars is 3396.9 kilometers, which is almost half that of the Earth - 53.2% of the Earth’s. The surface area of ​​Mars is approximately equal to the land area of ​​.

4. Due to the thin atmosphere and low pressure on most of the surface of Mars, water cannot exist in a liquid state, so it exists in a state of ice or steam. However, geological evidence suggests that water covered a significant portion of the surface of Mars in the distant past.

5. A recent discovery has confirmed the presence of colossal reserves of water ice beneath the surface of the South Polar Cap. It was previously thought that it consisted mainly of frozen carbon dioxide, but it turned out that the volume of water ice under its surface is so large that it would cover the surface of the entire Mars with an 11-meter layer of water.

6. Due to low pressure, water on Mars boils already at a temperature of +10 °C. In other words, water from ice, almost bypassing the liquid phase, quickly turns into steam.

7. The minimum distance from Mars to Earth is 55.76 million kilometers. And the maximum distance - at the moment when it is exactly between Earth and Mars - is approximately 401 million kilometers.

8. Traveling from Earth to Mars at the most economical distance would take about 9 months of flight.

9. Mars is closest to Earth during opposition, when the planet is in the sky in the opposite direction to the Sun. Oppositions are repeated every 26 months at different points in the orbit of Mars and Earth.

10. The highest mountain on Mars, Olympus Volcano, reaches a height of 21.2 kilometers. Olympus occupies such a large area that it cannot be seen in its entirety from the surface of the planet, so its full profile can only be seen from the air or orbit. For comparison: the highest point on Earth is Mount Everest (Qomolungma), whose height is 8.8 kilometers (8848 meters).

11. According to NASA's Phoenix probe, the content of perchlorates (salts) in the soil of Mars casts doubt on the possibility of growing terrestrial plants in Martian soil without artificial soil, or without additional experiments.

12. Analysis of observations suggests that the planet previously had much more favorable conditions for life than now. The absence of a magnetosphere and the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars are a problem for maintaining life on the planet.

13. The thin, thin, dust-laden atmosphere of Mars affects the color of the sky on Mars: at midday it is yellow-orange. Rayleigh scattering, which causes blue skies on Earth, plays a minor role on Mars.

14. The thinness of the Martian atmosphere and the absence of a magnetosphere affect increased radiation on the surface of Mars. It is significantly higher than on Earth. In one or two days, an astronaut on Mars would receive the same dose of radiation that he would receive while spending a year on Earth.

15. Currently, Mars is a planet geologically more similar to or than to Earth.

16. The force of gravity on Mars is approximately 2.63 times less than on Earth. It has not yet been established whether this force is enough to avoid the health problems that arise in zero gravity.

18. The surface of Mars is currently being explored by two rovers: Opportunity and Curiosity. There are also several inactive landers and rovers on the surface of Mars that have completed exploration.

When NASA announced that it had found signs of water on Mars, the news was stunning. Since then, many discoveries have been made, information about most of which immediately became public knowledge. There are currently two Mars rovers operating on the Red Planet. Three orbiters monitor Mars from above. In addition, two more probes are going to our space neighbor. We continue to uncover all the most hidden mysteries and confirm previous ideas regarding this planet. And today we’ll talk about ten of the latest facts about this illusory desert world.

There's a rock on Mars that could contain life

Impactites are rocks formed as a result of shock-explosive (impact) rock formation during the fall of meteorites. Most often, these impactites are composed of rocks, minerals, glass, and crystalline structures formed by impact metamorphism. The most famous sources of impactites on Earth are, perhaps, the Alamo impact crater in the Nevada desert (USA) and Darwin Crater in Tasmania. Last year, NASA found another one on Mars.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter discovered deposits of impact glass in several impact craters on the Red Planet. A year earlier, scientist Peter Schultz showed the public impact glass of a similar structure, found in Argentina and containing parts of plants and organic molecules. This suggests that Martian impact glass may also contain traces of ancient life.

The next step for scientists is to take samples of this Martian impact glass. Among the first candidates for testing is Hargraves Crater, one of the proposed landing sites for the new Mars rover in 2020.

Passing comets “stagger” the magnetosphere of Mars

In September 2014, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft entered Mars orbit. Just a few weeks later, the probe witnessed a rather rare event when a passing comet came very close to the Red Planet.

Comet C/2013 A1, better known as Siding Spring, was discovered in 2013. Initially, scientists believed that it would fall on Mars, but the two objects missed each other at a distance of 140,000 kilometers.

Researchers were interested in the effects that could be caused by such a close approach. Since Mars has a weak magnetosphere, scientists immediately noted that as the comet approached, a powerful emission of ions occurred, which affected its stability. NASA compared this effect to powerful but short-lived solar storms. As the comet's magnetic force intensified as it approached, Mars' magnetic field was in complete chaos. She literally fluttered like a reed in the wind.

Mars has a Mohawk

In 2013, the MAVEN spacecraft was sent to Mars to study its atmosphere. Based on information gathered from the probe's observations, a computer model was created that showed the planet to have quite the punk mohawk.

Mars' extravagant hairstyle is actually made up of electrically charged particles blown from the planet's upper atmosphere by the solar wind. The electric field created by the approaching solar wind (as well as other solar activity) attracts these particles to the poles.

Agricultural future of Mars

If we really are going to settle on Mars, we first need to develop methods of supplying future colonists. According to scientists from Wageningen University (Netherlands), we have already found four crops that can be adapted to grow in Martian soil conditions.

These crops are tomatoes, radishes, rye and peas. Scientists made their conclusions based on an experiment on growing them in Martian soil artificially created by NASA. Despite the fact that such soil contains a high concentration of heavy metals (cadmium and copper), crops do not consume dangerous amounts of these substances during growth and, therefore, remain completely edible.

Four of these crops (along with six other types of food) have already been selected as a potential source of fresh food on Mars.

Mysterious dunes of Mars

Martian dunes have also been the object of observation by rovers and orbital probes for quite a long time, but more recently, images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were obtained on Earth. It is worth admitting that the pictures made scientists think a lot. In February 2016, the spacecraft photographed a region covered with very oddly shaped dunes (as you can see by looking at the photo above), reminiscent of the dots and dashes used in Morse code.

According to the most current assumption, these dunes owe their bizarre shape to an impact crater located not far from them, which limited the volume of sand for their formation. The dash-shaped dunes, according to scientists, were formed by winds blowing from two directions, which gave them such a linear shape.

However, the nature of the “dune points” still remains a mystery. Typically, this shape occurs when something interferes with the formation of linear dunes. However, scientists are still not sure what this “something” actually is, so further study of this region of Mars should lift the curtain on this mystery.

The mystery of Martian minerals

The region of Mars explored by the Mars rover in 2015 raised more questions for NASA scientists than it answered. Known as the "Mars Passage", this region is a geological contact zone where a layer of sandstones is superimposed on a layer of mudstones.

This area has an exceptionally high concentration of silica. In individual stones it is up to 90 percent. Silicon dioxide is a chemical component that is often found in rocks and minerals on Earth, especially quartz.

According to Albert Yen, one of the Curiosity rover crew members, typically obtaining high concentrations of silica requires either a process to dissolve other components or an environment in which these components can form. In other words, you need water. Therefore, solving the issue of producing silicon dioxide on Mars will help scientists better imagine what ancient Mars was like.

Scientists were even more surprised when Curiosity took samples of these stones. It turned out that they contain a mineral called tridymite. On Earth, this mineral is extremely rare, but in the “Martian Passage” it literally just lies there. Everywhere. And researchers don’t yet understand where it came from.

White planet

There was a time when the famous Red Planet was more white than red. According to astronomers from the Southern Research Institute in Boulder (Colorado, USA), the planet “reddened” relatively recently. After experiencing an ice age much more extreme than our Earth has seen.

Scientists came to this conclusion after observing layers of glaciers at the north pole of Mars. If we were talking about the Earth, then scientists would simply drill into our planet and take out an ice sample, subsequently carefully studying each of its layers. But since we don’t yet have the opportunity to do the same with Mars, astronomers used the Shallow Subsurface Radar scientific instrument installed on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for this purpose.

Thanks to this long-wavelength scanner, scientists were able to look 2 kilometers deep into the Martian ice crust and created a two-dimensional map that showed that the planet experienced a very violent ice age about 370,000 years ago. Moreover, scientists have found that in about 150,000 years the planet will experience another complete freeze.

Underground volcanoes of Mars

Tridymite is typically found in volcanic rock, so its presence on Mars could indicate significant volcanic activity on the planet in the past. New evidence from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also indicates that Mars once had active volcanoes that erupted just beneath the ice.

The probe studied the Sisyphi Montes region, and scientists realized that it consists of plateaus, very similar in shape to Earth's volcanoes, which still erupt from time to time under the ice.

When an eruption occurs, its force is so powerful that it literally breaks through the ice layer and throws huge volumes of ash into the air. As a result of such eruptions, a large number of different rocks and minerals are also formed, characteristic of these types of eruptions. The same was found in Sisyphi Montes.

Ancient megatsunamis of Mars

Scientists are still debating whether the Red Planet once had a northern ocean. New research on this subject indicates that the ocean really existed, and, moreover, giant tsunamis raged in it.

Until now, the only evidence that an ancient ocean once existed here was indistinct coastlines. And if you believe the assumption about the existence of giant megatsunamis at that time, then it is quite possible to explain the reason for the blurring of these coastlines.

Alex Rodriguez, one of the scientists who proposed the idea, says the waves of these giant tsunamis reached 120 meters in height. Moreover, they arose at least once every three million years.

Rodriguez is very interested in studying craters located near coastlines. As a result of a tsunami, these craters could fill with water and retain it for millions of years, making them ideal places to look for signs of ancient life.

There was more water on Mars than in the Arctic Ocean

Although the location of the Martian ocean is still a matter of debate, scientists agree that the Red Planet once had a lot of water. NASA believes there was enough water here to cover the entire planet and form an ocean 140 meters deep. And although, most likely, water was concentrated more locally on Mars, according to scientists, there was more of it than in the Arctic ocean. The Martian ocean could occupy up to 19 percent of the planet's area.

Scientists make these assumptions based on observations made using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Currently, the atmosphere of Mars contains two forms of water: H2O and HDO (heavy water), where the usual hydrogen molecules are replaced by deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.

Scientists calculated the ratio of the current concentration of H2O and HDO on Mars and compared it with the ratio of the concentration of water in a 4.5 billion-year-old Martian meteorite. The results showed that Mars had lost 87 percent of its water reserves.

© NASA Photo

An incredible panorama of the surface of Mars has been created from images taken by the Curiosity rover. He has been traveling around the “red planet”, studying it, since 2012. One of the onboard cameras captured 16 images, which NASA then stitched together into a stunning ultra-wide panorama. From which they also made a video.

The color balance of the photographs was adjusted to give them a more earthy, familiar color to the eye, while muting the actual rusty red color typical of Mars. This gave the pictures some resemblance to earthly landscapes, writes Daily Mail.

Video: Curiosity's Martian landscapes

The images were taken by the rover on October 25, 2017, during sol 1856 (Martian days) from the start of the Curiosity mission. Thanks to the thinner Martian atmosphere compared to Earth’s, the photo clearly shows mountains at a distance of about 80 kilometers.

Additionally, the video shows Curiosity's route since the mission began in August 2012.

Photo by NASA.

The pictures were taken from an area called the Vera Rubin Ridge. This image shows Bradbury Landing, where Curiosity first touched down on the Martian surface more than 2,000 days ago. It also marks other significant mission sites. Take Yellowknife Bay, for example, where the rover found traces of an ancient freshwater lake that scientists believe contained all the essential chemical ingredients for microbial life.

In total, since August 6, 2012, Curiosity has traveled about 18 km on Mars. Carrying 80 kg of scientific equipment on board, the entire rover weighs a total of 899 kg and is powered by a generator that produces electricity from the natural decay of the isotope plutonium-238. Plutonium, by the way, was purchased, presumably, in Russia.