Mars

Mars♂
General Information
Other names	Red planet
Named after	Roman god of war
First landing	1975
First crewed landing	8 February 1995
First person	Lee Jung-Gil (North Korea)
Bases	Happy Valley (International / M-7)
Former bases	Happy Valley (1995) (NASA / Roscosmos) Helios base (Helios)
Satellites	Phoenix Unknown amount of other orbiters
Astronomical & Physical Information
Location	Solar System
Primary body	Sun
Type	Planet
Subtype	Terrestrial
Position	4
Diameter	6,779 km
Moons	3 PhobosW DeimosW Goldilocks (as of 2003)
Gravity	0.38 g
Temperature	-110°C (min) 35°C (max)
Orbital speed	24.07 km/s (86,700 km/h)
Length of day	24 h 39 m (1 sol)
Length of year	687 Earth days (668.6 sols)
Distance to Earth	55 million km (min) 400 million km (max)
Com delay	3 min (min) 22.4 min (max)

Mars is a terrestrial planet in the Solar System and the fourth planet from the Sun. Due to its reddish color, coming from the iron oxide prevalent on its surface, it is also called the "Red Planet".

Multiple spacecraft and rovers have been sent to the planet over a long period, starting in the 60s. In the mid 90s, the first humans landed on the surface of Mars.

Regions

Valles Marineris

The Valles Marineris^W is a large system of canyons that runs along the Martian surface. It is located along the equator of Mars and stretches for nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference. Valles Marineris is one of the largest canyons of the Solar System.

Melas Chasma

Melas Chasma^W is the widest segment of the Valles Marineris canyon system and is where both American crewed Mars missions set up their bases after landing in 1995.

Gagarin Ridge

Main article: Gagarin Ridge

Gagarin Ridge is a steep ridge at Melas Chasma beside the plain where the first Helios mission set up their Mars base in 1995.

Peckinpah Mesa

Peckinpah Mesa is a hill close to the Happy Valley colony. Samantha Massey found some obsidian^W there, which Miles Dale sent to his daughter. He wanted to collect more after his wife told him that she was offered $5,000 for it from someone who wanted to make jewelry out of it, but he fell and slid into a trench and had to be rescued by Sam.

Ares Vallis

Ares Vallis^W is an outflow channel on Mars. It appears to have been carved by fluids, perhaps water.

Meridiani Planum

The Meridiani Planum^W is a large plain straddling the equator of Mars, covered with a vast number of spherules containing a lot of iron oxide.

Elysium Planitia

Elysium Planitia^W is a broad plain that straddles the equator of Mars. It lies to the south of the volcanic province of Elysium^W, the second largest volcanic region on the planet, after Tharsis^W.

Planum Australe

Planum Australe^W is the southern polar plain on Mars.

Chasma Australe

Chasma Australe is a 500 km long and up to 80 km wide canyon up to 1000 m deep at Planum Australe near the Martian south pole.

Gusev crater

Gusev^W is a large Martian crater about 166 kilometers in diameter, formed approximately three to four billion years ago.

Korolev crater

Main article: Korolev crater

The Korolev crater, named after former Soviet chief engineer Sergei Korolev, is an ice-filled impact crater in the northern polar plain Planum Boreum^W on Mars.

Exploration

Uncrewed missions

See also: Mars rover

Several uncrewed robotic probes and rovers have been sent to the red planet's surface. The first successful landing happened in 1975 when NASA's lander Hermes touched ground undamaged in Ares Vallis and deployed its rover Sojourner, sending home the first ever pictures from the Martian surface.

Subsequently, more missions with or without rovers were sent to Mars to explore its surface and atmosphere by several countries. In the eraly 90s, India, Turkey and North Korea sent uncrewed probes to the surface of Mars with rendezvous systems sold by Roscosmos.

In mid 1992, the two rovers Spirit^W and Opportunity^W of NASA's MER mission^W were operating inside the Gusev crater and at Meridiani Planum, respectively.
The robotic probe Endurance was performing long term seismic studies at Elysium Planitia and was still operating in 1995.

In early 1995, NASA's Galileo V probe MPL-2 was doing climate studies at Planum Australe near the Martian south pole.

Crewed missions

See also: Race to Mars, Sojourner-1 mission, Helios Mars mission, Roscosmos Mars mission, and Happy Valley colony

In the mid-1990s, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the American private competitor Helios Aerospace raced to land the first humans on the planet. The three competitors all launched their missions during the same launch window in fall 1994, and after an intense race, the first humans believed to set foot on the planet were Grigory Kuznetsov and Danielle Poole.

However, in September 1994, some weeks before the others, the North Korea space program had sent what was believed to be an uncrewed probe to the surface of Mars. Actually, the probe secretly carried two North Korean cosmonauts, Lee Jung-Gil and Park Chol. While the latter was killed during the landing, Lee became the real first man setting foot on Mars on February 8, 1995.

Early 1995, the combined NASA/Roscosmos teams and Helios both set up their own bases on the planet's surface, Happy Valley and Helios base, both inside the canyon Melas Chasma in the Valles Marineris system.

In the late 1990s, the old base transitioned into an international colony of the Mars-7 Alliance nations maintained by Helios, with over 100 habitants.

In 2003, Kelly Baldwin was working at the Carl Sagan Center for Planetary Science on a project to find microbial life in lava tubes^W around the Korolev crater and other regions on Mars using kinetically enhanced robots. Some time later, back on Mars, she took a 3-day trip to the crater with her team to set up her experiment. Kelly's robots detected substantial signatures of methane concentration, the heaviest being registered at Korolev crater, but also from Chasma Australe near the Martian south pole.

Gallery

First image taken of the Martian surface in 1975 by NASA's Hermes lander

Surface of Mars

A valley on Mars

Lee Jung-Gil stepping foot on Mars in 1995

A group of astronauts on Mars

An astronaut looking over Melas Chasma

NASA base on Mars

Helios base on Mars

Valles Marineris

Location of various probes on Mars

Peckinpah Mesa, a hill on Mars

Mars in 2012

Patches

Nasa Mars patch

Sojourner-1 mission patch

Mars-94 mission patch

Helios Phoenix patch

Spirit patch

Opportunity patch

North Korean Space Program patch 1994

M-7 Alliance insigna 2003

Happy Valley patch 2003

Happy Valley Eden patch

Happy Valley Hephaestus patch

Auger drill patch

Phoenix station patch 2003

Terminology

Term	Plural	Explanation
Planum	Plana	Latin word for plateau. It is the IAUW descriptor term for plateaus and high plains.
Planitia	Planitiae	Latin word for plain. It is the IAU descriptor term for features which are "low plains".
Vallis / Valles	Valles	Latin word for valley. It is used in planetary geology to name landform features on other planets.
Chasma	Chasmata	A chasma is a deep, elongated, steep-sided depression.
Australis		Latin word for southern or the south.
Borealis		Latin word for northern or the north.

See also

Interactive Mars map Gagarin Ridge Korolev crater Race to Mars Space missions

Solar System Mercury Venus Earth   →   Moon Jupiter Neptune

External links

•   Mars on Wikipedia
•   Valles Marineris on Wikipedia
•   Melas Chasma on Wikipedia
•   trek.nasa.gov: Mars Trek - NASA