ASTRONOMY
SEPTEMBER 1, 2021
The Story Of The Red Planet
The story of the red planet, Mars. It is the fourth planet from the Sun, it is a dynamic planet with seasons, polar ice caps, canyons, extinct volcanoes and evidence that for its past activities. Its apparent magnitude reaches -2.94, brightest after Venus, the Moon and the Sun.
This planet is the most explored place in our solar system and the only planet where man-made rovers exploring the landscape. On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 landed successfully on the Martian surface following other rovers from NASA.
According to NASA Solar System exploration website NASA currently has two rovers (Curiosity and Perseverance), one lander (InSight) and one space helicopter (Ingenuity) exploring the surface of Mars.
In May 2021, China’s Zhurong Mars rover touched down on Mars surface making China the second nation to ever land successfully on the Red Planet after the United States. The Soviet Union actually launched some spacecrafts during 1960’s and 1970’s but most of the missions failed.
Today there is an international fleet of eight orbiters studying Mars. They found lots of evidence that Mars had a thicker atmosphere and was much wetter and warmer billions of years ago.
Mars carries the name of the Roman god of war and Greeks also named it after their god of war, Ares while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it “the fire star”. The iron oxide prevalent on Mars’s surface causing the planet has a reddish appearance visible to the naked eye, hence the nickname the “Red Planet”. The month March has its name from Mars.
The largest volcano and highest known mountain in the Solar System is the Mount Olympus located in Mars, with 27 km height it is three times higher than the Mount Everest.
Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos which may be asteroids that accidentally captured in the Mars orbit long time ago. It remains uncertain how they were there. The space.com website explains they were discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall in a week in 1877. He named the moons after the sons of the Greek war god Ares, Phobos means “fear” while Deimos means “rout”.
Mars also has seasons just like Earth as well as polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and weather. The atmosphere is very thin consists of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon. On some hillsides, there is evidence of liquid salty water in the ground. There are signs of ancient floods on Mars, but water mostly exists in icy dirt and thin clouds now. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface due to low atmospheric pressure – less than 1% of Earth.
In the pop culture universe Mars is the most attractive planet in the Solar System, capturing our imagination from decades ago. When people first observed Mars in 1800 they found the canal-like on Mars’ surface and speculated an intelligent alien species live there.
In 1938, the radio drama “The War of the Worlds” made widespread panic due to many listeners believed the story to be real, an invasion to Earth by aliens from Mars.
Many Hollywood movies have taken place on Mars as the main topic of the story. Movie like Total Recall (1990), The Martians (2015), Mission To Mars (2000) and Red Planet (2000).
In real life, a manned mission to Mars is already on its way to send the first human. Group of scientists, scholars and industry predicted it should be possible by the 2030’s.
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