It’s space week 2022 and to celebrate everything space we have a whole special series of not-so-romantic blogs dedicated to the week’s topic- space. In this part, we look at some fun facts about Mars- the red planet.
number 4
Let’s start simple. Mars is the fourth closest planet to the sun (behind Mercury, Venus and Earth). It’s an eye-watering 142 million miles away from the Sun. It’s known as a terrestrial planet which means it has a rocky surface like the three planets before it.
Mars gets its name from the Roman God of war.
two moons
Mars has two moons. Phobos and Deimos. Both were discovered in 1877 I personally enjoy how different the two moons’ look. I’m a big fan of Deimos.
Bring a duster!
Mars sometimes has large dust storms which can blast for months and months. They sometimes get so big the storms will cover the whole planet. If you ever visit- maybe bring a duster so you can dust off your belongings after a storm has blown through. Oh and a mask- you don’t want to get Mars dust in your mouth.
Life on mars?
NASA sent the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2011. In 2018 it discovered what scientists think were signs that there was once life on Mars. Perseverance was sent to Mars to drill into the Martian surface
Perseverance landed on Mars on the 18th of February 2021 and is currently searching an area called the “Jezeero crater” which scientists think might have been an ancient lake. Only time will tell how much Perseverance can discover.
Did you know? Perseverance is actually the fifth rover to have been sent to Mars. Let me know what the other four are called in the comments below.
bring a jumper
Mars is obviously further away from the Sun so you would expect it to be a little chillier on Mars than on Earth but it’s actually an average temperature of -62 degrees Celsius on Mars. Pretty darn cold. It can drop to something crazy cold like -140 degrees Celius though.
you can’t breathe on mars
This one isn’t very surprising and you most likely already knew it. But Mars doesn’t have a very thick atmosphere and there’s very little to no oxygen available. This means (as the heading suggests) that breathing on Mars wouldn’t be possible. This means you’d need a space suit!
Earth is bigger
Mars is about half the size of Earth – short and sweet. Isn’t that a fun fact about Mars? Actually, Mars is the second smallest planet in the Solar System- behind Mercury.
the red planet
The reason Mars is known as the red planet is because of the rusty iron in the ground. Not an iron you use to iron your clothes mind you. I should be more specific and say Iron Oxide.
the largest volcano in the solar system
Mars is home to the largest volcano in the solar system. Olympus Mons is 13.6 miles tall and if you were to place it on Earth the base would cover pretty much the whole of Poland. Thank goodness the volcanos on Mars are dead, lava out of Olympus Mons would probably melt the entire planet.
Olympus Mons is 3 times bigger than Mount Everest.
great for tigger impressions
The wonderful thing about Tigger is that he can jump extremely high. Well on Mars scientists reckon you could jump three times higher than you can on Earth thanks to the lack of gravity on Mars. That would certainly make high jump competitions more interesting.
day and year
A day on Mars is actually only 40 minutes longer than on Earth. The year does last 687 days though- pretty much double that than a year on Earth. I wonder if that means we’d all be younger on Mars?
And that’s a wrap on this not-so-romantic blog post. What has been your favourite fun fact about Mars? Oh, and do you have any more that you think I need to know about, as always let me know in the comments below!
related blogs
Be sure to check out these other blogs which run along the same theme as the one you’ve just read!