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Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million km) (12.673 light minutes), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. [1] [2] The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days [3] and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, [4] making the average orbital speed 24 km/s. The eccentricity is greater than that of every other planet except Mercury ...
On October 13, 1590, the German astronomer Michael Maestlin observed an occultation of Mars by Venus. [23] One of his students, Johannes Kepler, quickly became an adherent to the Copernican system. After the completion of his education, Kepler became an assistant to the Danish nobleman and astronomer, Tycho Brahe.
Timekeeping on Mars. (In red) Martian season lengths and time as compared to seasons on Earth (in blue), with marks for the vernal equinox, perihelion, and aphelion. Though no standard exists, numerous calendars and other timekeeping approaches have been proposed for the planet Mars. The most commonly seen in the scientific literature denotes ...
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. The surface of Mars is orange-red because it is covered in iron (III) oxide dust, giving it the nickname " the Red Planet ". [21] [22] Mars is among the brightest objects in Earth's sky, and its high-contrast albedo features have made it a common subject for telescope viewing.
Mariner 9, Viking 1 and Viking 2 are expected to lower down into the Martian atmosphere by 2022 and either burn up or crash into the planet's surface. [2] Mars Global Surveyor is expected to crash onto the surface of the planet by 2047. The fate of the Soviet's three Mars program orbiters and Phobos 2 remains unclear, but they are still ...
Mars has an axial tilt of 25.19°, quite close to the value of 23.44° for Earth, and thus Mars has seasons of spring, summer, autumn, winter as Earth does. As on Earth, the southern and northern hemispheres have summer and winter at opposing times. However, the orbit of Mars has significantly greater eccentricity than that of Earth.
The Mars 1M programs (sometimes dubbed Marsnik in Western media) was the first Soviet uncrewed spacecraft interplanetary exploration program, which consisted of two flyby probes launched towards Mars in October 1960, Mars 1960A and Mars 1960B (also known as Korabl 4 and Korabl 5 respectively).
Ares, the god of war, was known to the Romans as Mars . Compared to the Earth 's Moon, the moons Phobos and Deimos are small. Phobos has a diameter of 22.2 km (13.8 mi) and a mass of 1.08 × 10 16 kg, while Deimos measures 12.6 km (7.8 mi) across, with a mass of 1.5 × 10 15 kg. Phobos orbits closer to Mars, with a semi-major axis of 9,377 km ...