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Mars comes closer to Earth more than any other planet save Venus at its nearest—56 million km is the closest distance between Mars and Earth, whereas the closest Venus comes to Earth is 40 million km. Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. Extra-close ...
Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (1 part in 10 7) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly 1 millionth (10 −6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 AU from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU; 44,000 mi), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU ...
Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) is a radio science experiment onboard InSight Mars lander that will use the spacecraft communication system to provide precise measurements of Mars' rotation and wobble. RISE precisely tracks the location of the lander to measure how much Mars's axis wobbles as it orbits the Sun.
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
Areocentric orbit (named after Ares): An orbit around the planet Mars, such as that of its moons or artificial satellites. For orbits centered about planets other than Earth and Mars and for the dwarf planet Pluto, the orbit names incorporating Greek terminology are not as established and much less commonly used:
Planet orbiting the Sun in a circular orbit (e=0.0) Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.5 Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.2 Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.8 The red ray rotates at a constant angular velocity and with the same orbital time period as the planet, =. S: Sun at the primary focus, C: Centre of ...
Meteoroids in a retrograde orbit around the Sun hit the Earth with a faster relative speed than prograde meteoroids and tend to burn up in the atmosphere and are more likely to hit the side of the Earth facing away from the Sun (i.e. at night) whereas the prograde meteoroids have slower closing speeds and more often land as meteorites and tend ...
An areosynchronous orbit that is equatorial (in the same plane as the equator of Mars), circular, and prograde (rotating about Mars's axis in the same direction as the planet's surface) is known as an areostationary orbit (AEO). To an observer on the surface of Mars, the position of a satellite in AEO would appear to be fixed in a constant ...