1. Mars Basics

2. Size & Distance  Smaller than Earth (0.532x)  Mars diam ~ 6779 km (4212 miles)  Earth diam ~ 12,742 km (7918 miles)  8 Mars would fit inside the Earth!

3. Size & Distance

4.  Smaller than Earth (0.532x)  Mars diam ~ 6779 km (4212 miles)  Earth diam ~ 12,742 km (7918 miles)  8 Mars would fit inside the Earth!  1.5 AU from the sun (~140 million miles)  0.5 AU from the Earth (~43 million miles)  SCALE!!!

5. Scale  Using a 12-inch Earth globe and 6-inch Mars globe as a scale:  Q: How far away do you think Mars would be?  A: 1.4 km (~0.87 miles)

6. LPI McDonald’s

7. Rotation & Revolution  One Martian day (sol) is 24 hours and 37 minutes  One Martian year is 687 Earth days, almost two Earth years

8. Seasons  Like Earth, Mars tilts  This tilt contributes to seasons, orbit also contributes

9. Atmosphere  Yep. Mars has an atmosphere.  ~95% CO 2, ~3% N 2, ~2% Ar; traces of O 2, CO  Surface pressure ~0.006 atm (~1/100 th Earth’s atmosphere)  Gerard Kuiper made spectroscopic observations of CO 2 in the atmosphere in 1952; presumed to be a minor constituent until 1965

10. Interior  Core, mantle, crust  No magnetic field today; data support one in the past

11. Mars is Cold  Average temp: -63° C (max & min vary)  Weirdness above the surface…

12. Deimos – 15 km (9.3 miles) Phobos – 26.8 km (16.7 miles) Moons