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NASA's Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to visit Mars; launched on 28 November 1964, it made its closest approach to the planet on 15 July 1965. Mariner 4 detected the weak Martian radiation belt, measured at about 0.1% that of Earth, and captured the first images of another planet from deep space.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Mars: Mars – fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is often referred to as the "Red Planet" [1] [2] because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance.
Spotting Mars at opposition is easier than you might think because the planet will stand out due to its color and radiance. Instead of appearing a whitish yellow shade like the stars, it will be a ...
Many martian dunes strongly resemble terrestrial dunes but images acquired by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have shown that martian dunes in the north polar region are subject to modification via grainflow triggered by seasonal CO 2 sublimation, a process not seen on Earth. [12]
Ancient remnants of long-extinct alien life are all NASA can hope for on the parched Martian surface. But any sizeable source of liquid water, like these potential underground reservoirs, is a ...
It was not until spacecraft visited the planet during NASA's Mariner missions in the 1960s that these myths were dispelled. Some maps of Mars were made using the data from these missions, but it wasn't until the Mars Global Surveyor mission, launched in 1996 and ending in late 2006, that complete, extremely detailed maps were obtained.
Mars 4 flew by the planet at a range of 2200 km returning one swath of pictures and radio occultation data, which constituted the first detection of the nightside ionosphere on Mars. [49] Mars 7 probe separated prematurely from the carrying vehicle due to a problem in the operation of one of the onboard systems ( attitude control or retro ...
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.