Characteristics of MARS

Good Morning my little friends!!!

I am back again with an interesting topic, as i do every day. Have you learned anytime about Mars?Today we shall understand about "Characteristics of MARS"

• Distance from the sun: 1.52 ± 0.14 AU (1AU= 149,597,870.7 kms)

• Mass: : 0.107 earth mass (6.4185X 10 ²³ kg) (11% of Earth mass)

• Surface area : 0.284 Earth area

• Surface temperature : 227K (-- 46°C, mean)

• Orbital period : 686.971 days

• Satellites : 2 (Phobos and Deimos)

• Volume : 0.151 Earth volume(15% of Earths volume)

• Solar day (Sol) : 24hours,39 mins,35.244 seconds

Atmosphere of Mars:
Mars is a planet like almost like our own with a negligible atmosphere but with ample evidences of impact crates from asteriods and comets, and bears similarity with the structures of Earth at the polar ice caps.Different mariner missions have conferred that there was extensive water on Mar's surface and theoretically may be subterranean .Presence of water at the poles of Mars was confirmed in 2005. The Phoneix Lander found water ice in shallow soil of Mars on July 31, 2008(Permafrost).The urge of discovering water on Mars can be understood as the intense urge to find extraterrestrial life since water is the basis of evolution of molecules that created life on Earth.Possibly Mars started to develop an atmosphere but the weak gravitational field could not hold on to it ( Gravity only 38% of Earth).

• Carbon di oxide : 95.32%

• Nitrogen : 2.7%

• Oxygen : 0.13 %

• Carbon monoxide : 0.08%

Besides there are several other gases like krypton, molecular hydrogen, Neon,Xenon, Ozone, methane, hydrogen peroxide, nitric oxide etc in minor amounts.Mars is devoid of the magnetosphere that shields out the solar wind and thus it reacts directly with the martian ionosphere, removing the atoms from it and consequently thinning the atmosphere.The surface pressure of Mars is less than 1% of that of Earth.Water cannot exist on Mars surface due to low atmospheric pressure.

In our next blog we shall learn about "Climatic Conditions on Mars"

I hope the above explanation was useful. Keep reading and leave your comments.