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Like Earth, Mars has clouds, winds, a roughly 24-hour day, seasonal weather patterns, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and other familiar features. There are intriguing clues that billions of years ago Mars was even more Earth-like than today, with a denser, warmer atmosphere and much more water — rivers , lakes , flood channels, and ...
Mars appears to have had a watery past, with ancient river valley networks, deltas, and lakebeds, as well as rocks and minerals on the surface that could only have formed in liquid water. Some features suggest that Mars experienced huge floods about 3.5 billion years ago.
One of the most striking aspects of the Martian surface is the contrast between the southern and northern hemispheres. Most of the southern hemisphere is high-standing and heavily cratered, resembling the battered highlands of the Moon. Most of the northern hemisphere is low-lying and sparsely cratered.
The common surface features of Mars include dark slope streaks, dust devil tracks, sand dunes, Medusae Fossae Formation, fretted terrain, layers, gullies, glaciers, scalloped topography, chaos terrain, possible ancient rivers, pedestal craters, brain terrain, and ring mold craters.
Mars topography. But perhaps most striking of all is the general difference in height and surface roughness between the northern and southern hemispheres. The northern hemisphere is smooth and flat and on average six kilometres lower than the rugged highlands of the south.
Mars appears to have had a watery past, with ancient river valley networks, deltas, and lakebeds, as well as rocks and minerals on the surface that could only have formed in liquid water. Some features suggest that Mars experienced huge floods about 3.5 billion years ago.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this view of a sulfate-bearing region using its Mastcam on May 2, 2022, the 3,462nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Dark boulders seen near the center are thought to have formed from sand deposited in ancient streams or ponds.
Structure and Surface. Mars is a terrestrial planet. It is small and rocky. Mars has a thin atmosphere. Mars has an active atmosphere, but the surface of the planet is not active. Its volcanoes are dead. Time on Mars. One day on Mars lasts 24.6 hours. It is just a little longer than a day on Earth. One year on Mars is 687 Earth days.
Surface temperatures on Mars can reach as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as -225 degrees Fahrenheit, but on average, its surface is -81 degrees Fahrenheit, a full 138 degrees colder...
Mars is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s dry, rocky, and bitter cold. The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars, is one of Earth's two closest planetary neighbors (Venus is the other). Mars is one of the easiest planets to spot in the night sky — it looks like a bright red point of light.