The Planet Mars

Have you ever wondered just how big is the planet Mars?  Well, wonder no more!  Mars has a diameter of 6,792 km or 4,221 miles.  The diameter of Mars is about 1/2 that of Earth’s diameter.

How about some other Mars facts?

Mars’ mass is .107 Earths.

Mars has a surface gravity of .376 – which means if you weighed 100 pounds on Earth, you would only weigh 37.6 pounds on Mars.  Interestingly enough, Mars and Mercury have about the same amount of gravitational pull even though Mars is larger and more dense than Mercury.

The size of Earth compared to Mars

Since there is no water on Mars, it’s dry surface area is slightly less that the total area of Earth’s dry land.

Mars does have an atmosphere, but it is very thin.   It’s atmospheric pressure is only about 0.6% of Earth’s atmospheric pressure.  It’s equal to what Earth’s atmospheric pressure would be 35 km above the Earth.  Mars’ atmosphere contains mostly carbon dioxide.  95% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, 3% is nitrogen and 1.6% is argon.  There are also traces of oxygen and water.  Make no mistake, you could not live breathing the air on Mars.

Mars is home to the largest mountain known to exist in the Solar System.  It’s called Olympus Mons.  Mars also has the largest canyon known.  It’s called Valles Marineris.

It takes 687 Earth days to orbit the sun.  A day on Mars is 24 hours and 39 minutes making the Martian year equal to 1.8809 Earth years or 1 year, 320 days, and 18.2 hours.

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