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It is known that in the past, Mars has had a much more circular orbit. At one point, 1.35 million Earth years ago, Mars had an eccentricity of roughly 0.002, much less than that of Earth today. [188] Mars's cycle of eccentricity is 96,000 Earth years compared to Earth's cycle of 100,000 years. [189]
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 ...
the Sol system: 668 sols per Mars Year. This system consists of uniform time units. However, Mars Year sols may be confused with rover mission times that are also expressed in sols. Unlike in the day vs. sol distinction, "Mars Year" has no unique Latin term. Start and End dates of Mars Years were determined for 1607–2141 by Piqueux et al. [2 ...
The average length of a Martian sidereal day is 24 h 37 m 22.663 s (88,642.663 seconds based on SI units), and the length of its solar day is 24 h 39 m 35.244 s (88,775.244 seconds). [3]
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 light-year unit appeared in 1851 in a German popular astronomical article by Otto Ule. [24] Ule explained the oddity of a distance unit name ending in "year" by comparing it to a walking hour (Wegstunde). A contemporary German popular astronomical book also noticed that light-year is an odd name. [25]
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]
It is approximately 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds long. A Martian year is approximately 668.6 sols, equivalent to approximately 687 Earth days [1] or 1.88 Earth years. The sol was adopted in 1976 during the Viking Lander missions and is a measure of time mainly used by NASA when, for example, scheduling the use of a Mars rover. [2] [3]