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The average time between the successive oppositions of Mars, its synodic period, is 780 days; but the number of days between successive oppositions can range from 764 to 812. [189] The distance at close approach varies between about 54 and 103 million km (34 and 64 million mi) due to the planets' elliptical orbits, which causes comparable ...
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 ...
An illustration of what Mars may have looked like during an ice age about 400,000 years ago caused by a large axial tilt As on Earth, the effect of precession causes the north and south celestial poles to move in a very large circle, but on Mars the cycle is 95,500 Martian years (179,600 Earth years) [ 24 ] rather than 26,000 years as on Earth.
The geology of Mars is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the planet Mars. It emphasizes the composition, structure, history, and physical processes that shape the planet. It is analogous to the field of terrestrial geology. In planetary science, the term geology is used in its broadest sense to mean the study of the ...
Areography, also known as the geography of Mars, is a subfield of planetary science that entails the delineation and characterization of regions on Mars. [1][2][3] Areography is mainly focused on what is called physical geography on Earth; that is the distribution of physical features across Mars and their cartographic representations.
Climate of Mars. Mars' cloudy sky as seen by Perseverance rover in 2023, sol 738. The climate of Mars has been a topic of scientific curiosity for centuries, in part because it is the only terrestrial planet whose surface can be easily directly observed in detail from the Earth with help from a telescope. Although Mars is smaller than the Earth ...
Many scientists believe life on Earth originated on Mars billions of years ago, and Atri sees the Red Planet as the perfect laboratory to research the theory. “We need to understand our neighbor ...
Mars has a higher scale height of 11.1 km than Earth (8.5 km) because of its weaker gravity. [5] The theoretical dry adiabatic lapse rate of Mars is 4.3 °C km −1 , [ 129 ] but the measured average lapse rate is about 2.5 °C km −1 because the suspended dust particles absorb solar radiation and heat the air. [ 2 ]