Gentle Reminiscences of Mars
The planet Mars is one of Earth’s next door neighbors in space and is the fourth planet from the Sun, approximately 4.6 billion years old. Historical stories have shown us that the Romans copied the Greeks in naming the red planet for the ancient Roman god of war. They associated it with war because its color resembled the color of blood, with Mars’ color consisting of a bright reddish-orange color when viewed from the Earth. Its color comes from the iron rich minerals in its soil and is similar to the color of rust, which is actually composed of iron and oxygen.
Like earth, Mars has clouds in its atmosphere and a deposit of ice at its North Pole, but unlike Earth at one time Mars was thought to have no liquid water on its surface. Scientists have since found strong evidence that water once flowed on the surface of Mars, with many missions geared toward search for this valuable item. Channels, valleys, and gullies–the Martian planet provides such evidence for it. And if this evidence is correct, water may still lie in cracks and pores in subsurface rocks with findings of vast amounts of water-ice beneath the surface of Mars. Many recent findings have found such evidence near the South Pole, discovered by space probes. What is exciting is that Mars has been discovered to have a canyon system that is much deeper and much longer than the Grand Canyon, with a beautiful sunset on Mars creating a golden glow due to the presence of tiny dust particles in the atmosphere
As we all know, the planet Mars can be observed through telescopes on Earth and located in space, with space probes having carried telescopes and other instruments to the red planet throughout space history. Early probes were designed to observe the planet as they flew past it. Later on, spacecraft orbited Mars and even though landed there. However, still no human being has ever set foot on Mars. Yet a group of researchers has recently claimed to have found tiny bits of evidence that living things once dwelled on Mars. Even so, most scientists are still not convinced that this is true.
Above the surface of Mars lies an atmosphere that is about one hundred times less dense than the atmosphere of the Earth. But Mars’s atmosphere is dense enough to support a weather system that includes clouds and winds, with remendous dust storms sometimes rage over the entire period, as we know due to the “almost” destruction of the two twin Martian rovers. And Mars is much colder than Earth, with temperatures on the Martian surface varying from as low as -195 degrees F. near the poles during the winter, to as much as 70 degrees at mid day near the Equator–the average temperature is minus 80 degrees F.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Mission History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
