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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 ...
Planetary habitability in the Solar System is the study that searches the possible existence of past or present extraterrestrial life in those celestial bodies. As exoplanets are too far away and can only be studied by indirect means, the celestial bodies in the Solar System allow for a much more detailed study: direct telescope observation, space probes, rovers and even human spaceflight.
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.
This is a list of confirmed exoplanets within the circumstellar habitable zone that are either under 10 Earth masses or smaller than 2.5 Earth radii, and thus have a chance of being rocky.
Since the year 2000, Jupiter and Mars have been in conjunction just 11 times, according to Space.com. After Wednesday morning, it won't be until Nov. 15, 2026 that they cross paths again.
Jupiter: Callisto – potential habitability: Thought to have a subsurface ocean heated by tidal forces. [41] [42] Ganymede: Jupiter: Ganymede – Subsurface oceans: Thought to have a magnetic field, with ice and subterranean oceans stacked up in several layers, with salty water as a second layer on top of the rocky iron core. [43] [44] Io: Jupiter
The closest in the past 1,000 years was in 1761, when Mars and Jupiter appeared to the naked eye as a single bright object, according to Giorgini. Looking ahead, the year 2348 will be almost as close.
Mars has an atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide, with surface pressure 0.6% of that of Earth, which is sufficient to support some weather phenomena. [119] During the Mars year (687 Earth days), there are large surface temperature swings on the surface between −78.5 °C (−109.3 °F) to 5.7 °C (42.3 °F).