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At their furthest Mars and Earth can be as far as 401 million km (249 million mi) apart. [191] Mars comes into opposition from Earth every 2.1 years. The planets come into opposition near Mars's perihelion in 2003, 2018 and 2035, with the 2020 and 2033 events being particularly close to perihelic opposition. [192] [193] [194]
Substituting the mass of Mars for M and the Martian sidereal day for T and solving for the semimajor axis yields a synchronous orbit radius of 20,428 km (12,693 mi) above the surface of the Mars equator. [3] [4] [5] Subtracting Mars's radius gives an orbital altitude of 17,032 km (10,583 mi). Two stable longitudes exist - 17.92°W and 167.83°E.
Extra-close oppositions of Mars happen every 15 to 17 years, when we pass between Mars and the Sun around the time of its perihelion (closest point to the Sun in orbit). The minimum distance between Earth and Mars has been declining over the years, and in 2003 the minimum distance was 55.76 million km, nearer than any such encounter in almost ...
Recent research claims to have found the first strong evidence for a plate tectonic boundary on Mars. [5] The discovery refers to a large-scale (>2000 km in length and >150 km in slip) and quite narrow (<50 km wide) strike-slip fault zone in the Valles Marineris trough system, referred to as the Ius-Melas-Coprates fault zone (Fig. 7). The ...
The maximum angular separation of the Earth and Moon varies considerably according to the relative distance between the Earth and Mars: it is about 25′ when Earth is closest to Mars (near inferior conjunction) but only about 3.5′ when the Earth is farthest from Mars (near superior conjunction). For comparison, the apparent diameter of the ...
Deimos (/ ˈ d aɪ m ə s /; systematic designation: Mars II) [11] is the smaller and outer of the two natural satellites of Mars, the other being Phobos. Deimos has a mean radius of 6.2 km (3.9 mi) and takes 30.3 hours to orbit Mars. [5] Deimos is 23,460 km (14,580 mi) from Mars, much farther than Mars's other moon, Phobos. [12]
At more than 4,000 km (2,500 mi) long, 200 km (120 mi) wide and up to 7 km (23,000 ft) deep, [3] [4] Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the Solar System. [ 5 ] Valles Marineris is located along the equator of Mars, on the east side of the Tharsis Bulge, and stretches for nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference.
The most conspicuous feature of Mars is a sharp contrast, known as the Martian dichotomy, between the Southern and the Northern hemispheres. The two hemispheres' geography differ in elevation by 1 to 3 km. The average thickness of the Martian crust is 45 km, with 32 km in the northern lowlands region, and 58 km in the southern highlands.