About Mars
Mars, the “Red Planet,” is the fourth planet from the Sun and is made up of a metallic core, silicate mantle, and crust rich in iron, silicon, oxygen, and magnesium, covered in iron oxide that gives it its color.It is a cold, dusty, and desert-like world. It is the second smallest planet in our solar system.Mars shares several similarities with Earth, including a 24.6-hour day, seasons, polar ice caps, and weather patterns, although its year is much longer at 687 Earth days. Its tenuous atmosphere, composed mostly of carbon dioxide, is nearly 100 times thinner than Earth’s and offers little protection from solar radiation. The landscape is home to some extreme features, notably Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano and mountain in the solar system, and the vast Valles Marineris canyon system. Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, that may be captured asteroids. They’re potato-shaped because they have too little mass for gravity to make them spherical. Mars has a large canyon system called Valles Marineris that is long enough to stretch from California to New York. This canyon is around ten times the size of Earth’s Grand Canyon. The temperature on Mars can be as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit or as low as about -225 degrees Fahrenheit. And because the atmosphere is so thin, heat from the Sun easily escapes this planet. Occasionally, winds on Mars are strong enough to create dust storms that cover much of the planet. After such storms, it can be months before all of the dust settles.