Mars

code orbit: 227,940,000 km (1.52km from Sun) diameter: 6,794 km mass: 6.4219e23 km

code Mars is the 4th planet from the sun and the 7th largest. the greek word for mars is "Ares" which means the God of war. Mars must of gotten its name from the colour of it. Another nmae that they call mars is the red planet, and the name of the month March derives from Mars the first space caraft that was able to visit mars was the mariner 4 in 1965. Mars has some of the most interesting and highly varied terrain of any of the terrestrial planets. the outhern hemisphere is predominantly ancient cratered hihglands some similar to the moon. In contrast most of the northern hemisphere consist of younger. like mercury and the moons, mars has lack of active tectonic plates so it does not erupt which means with nolateral plate motion, then the hot spots underneat the crusts will stay in a fixed postion that is relative to the surface.

In early history, Mars was abit similar to earth. Like earth, almost all of its carbon dioxide was used up to form carbonate rocks. But, because of the lacking of earth's plates, mars is unable to recycle any of its carbon dioxide into its atmosphere and so cannot be sustain a significant green house effect. and also Mars's surface would be much colder because it is further away from the sun not like earth.

Mar's has a very think atmosphere and is mainly composed of tiny amounts of: carbon dioxide (95.3%) nitrogen (2.7%) argon (1.6%) oxygen (0.15%) water (0.03%)

The average pressure on mar's surface is only about 7 millibars which is less then 1% of earths, but it varies greatly with altitude from almost 9 millibars in the deepest basns to about 1 millibar at the top of olympus moons, but it is thick enough to support very stronge winds and cast dust storms that on ocassion engulf the entire planet for months.



Mars has 2 rings and they are called phobos and deimos.