Mars

Mars

Image: NASA/USGS

Mars is a hostile, dusty planet

Data collected by missions to Mars show that the red planet is a small, cold, toxic desert. 

Image: NASA/JPL

A little over half as wide and with just one-third the gravity of Earth, Mars can only hold onto a very thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. 

Image: NASA/JPL

But a visitor from Earth looking out over the surface of Mars would view a landscape that is strangely similar to home. 

Images captured by NASA and the European Space Agency show a dynamic Martian landscape, full of mountains, canyons, icecaps and dried riverbeds.

Image: NASA/JPL

Mars is a planet of highs and lows. 

This map of Mars shows how the relative height of the Martian landscape changes across the planet’s surface.

The wide variety of terrain shown in this map hint at a very different Mars in the distant past. 

The blue and green areas are lower places on the Martian surface.  

Image: NASA/JPL

They show immense canyons ...

Image: NASA/JPL

... and meandering erosion channels. 

Image: NASA/JPL

The yellow and red areas are higher tablelands and steppes.

Image: NASA/JPL

The white points are towering extinct volcanos. 

Image: NASA/JPL

Including Olympus Mons – the tallest planetary mountain in the solar system.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS

Olympus Mons towers over the Martian landscape.

This long-extinct volcano rises 21 kilometres high – almost three times taller than Mt Everest. 

Imagine the view from the top! 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Like Earth, Mars sometimes experiences stormy weather.

Here we can see Mars engulfed by a planet-wide dust storm.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Although its atmosphere is only 2% as thick as Earth’s, winds sweeping across the surface of Mars thicken the Martian sky with toxic dust. 

In the weak Martian gravity, ultrafine dust particles can remain suspended in the planet’s atmosphere for months before setting back down to the surface.

Can you imagine being caught in one of these storms? 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The winds that lift dust particles up into the Martian air also reshape and transform the landscape. 

Just like in deserts on earth, dusty sand dunes form and reform as they’re blown gently across the surface of Mars. 

Over millions of years, these dunes shift and shape the Martian landscape. 

Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/Bill Dunford

Permanent ice caps that grow and shrink with the seasons cover the north and south poles of Mars.

Unlike the polar regions of Earth, the white Martian ice caps are mostly carbon dioxide that has frozen solid. 

Carbon dioxide makes up 95% of the thin Martian atmosphere. Water in any form is much harder to find. 

However, there is evidence that water was much more abundant in the planet’s distant past. 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

This now dry riverbed almost looks like a river delta found on Earth. 

Special camera filters on a satellite orbiting Mars reveal minerals in this image that can only form in water.

These are just one of many tantalising pieces of evidence that Mars may have once been a much warmer, wetter place. 

Since 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been exploring this chemically-rich ancient river bed. 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Lowered to the Martian surface by a 
rocket-powered flying crane, Perseverance is a car-sized roving science lab. 

Since arriving, Perseverance has searched for evidence that microbial life may once have flourished in the planet’s distant past. 

Perseverance also brought the Ingenuity helicopter to Mars. 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In April 2021, Ingenuity achieved the first controlled flight on another planet. 

Ingenuity made 72 flights, proving that the thin Martian air is no barrier to aerial exploration. 

Remotely operated technologies like Perseverance and Ingenuity are searching for evidence that life once existed in Mars's distant past.  

They are paving the way for future missions to Mars.

One day, humans may look out over and explore these strange yet familiar Martian landscapes in person. 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This digital exhibition is based on Questacon’s Mars pop-up exhibition. 

If you’d like to find out more about our touring exhibitions get in touch with 
our Travelling Exhibitions Team.

 

Keep your Mars adventure going with our Kinetic Craters experiment.

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