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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 ...
The solar day (or sol) on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. [185] A Martian year is equal to 1.8809 Earth years, or 1 year, 320 days, and 18.2 hours. [ 2 ]
The corresponding values for Earth are currently 23 h 56 m 4.0916 s and 24 h 00 m 00.002 s, respectively, which yields a conversion factor of 1.027 491 2517 Earth days/sol: thus, Mars's solar day is only about 2.75% longer than Earth's; approximately 73 sols pass for every 75 Earth days.
The lowest energy transfer to Mars is a Hohmann transfer orbit, a conjunction class mission which would involve a roughly 9-month travel time from Earth to Mars, about 500 days (16 mo) [citation needed] at Mars to wait for the transfer window to Earth, and a travel time of about 9 months to return to Earth. [9] [10] This would be a 34-month trip.
220 days (7 months, 8 days) The Mars 6 bus flew by Mars at a minimum distance of 1600 km. Also carried a lander. [13] Mars 7: Mars 9 August 1973 9 March 1974 213 days (7 months, 1 day) Mars 7's lander was released prematurely and missed Mars. [91] Mariner 10: Venus 3 November 1973 5 February 1974 95 days (3 months, 3 days)
NASA will test a nuclear-powered rocket for space travel. The technology could speed up a manned trip to Mars from the current seven-month minimum to 45 days.
The human exploration of Mars has been an aspiration since the earliest days of modern rocketry; Robert H. Goddard credits the idea of reaching Mars as his own inspiration to study the physics and engineering of space flight. [144] Proposals for human exploration of Mars have been made throughout the history of space exploration. Currently ...
Elon Musk said on X that he envisions Starships making uncrewed trips to Mars by 2026 before astronauts head to the Red Planet two years later.