MARS

History
Structure
Atmosphere
Landscape

Mars

MARS: RECENT HISTORY

1600-4 February, Johannes Keplerus (29) met Tycho de Brahe (53) in the castle at Benatek (22 miles NE of Prague). Kepler was given the job of computing the orbit of Mars. He boasted it would be done in 8 days-it took him 8 years!

1609-Kepler published his magnum opus entitled:

A NEW ASTRONOMY Based on Causation or A PHYSICS OF THE SKY derived from Investigations of the MOTIONS OF THE STAR MARS Founded on Observations of THE NOBLE TYCHO BRAHE.

It contains the first two of Kepler's planetary laws.

1618-Kepler published the: The Harmonies of the World which contained his third planetary law (p² = a³). The 30-Years War broke out that same year.

Martian Mania 

1877-Giovanni Schiaparelli announced he saw canali on Mars. This was mistranslated from Italian into English as canals, triggering Martian-mania throughout Europe and the United States!

1892-The Bostonian Percival Lowell built an observatory at Mars Hill, Flagstaff Arizona to look for life on Mars.

1897-H.G. Wells published the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. In 1938 just before the outbreak of the Second World War a broadcast by Orson Welles frightened millions of Americans who believed that Martians were in fact invading!

1907-Alfred Russell Wallace (co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection) produced a critique of Lowell's work:

Any attempt to make that scanty surplus [of water], by means of overflowing canals, travel across the equator into the opposite hemisphere, through such terrible desert regions and exposed to such a cloudless sky as Mr. Lowell describes, would be the work of a body of madmen rather than of intelligent beings. It may be safely asserted that not one drop of water would escape evaporation or insoak at even a hundred miles from its source.

1971-July Viking 1 landed on Mars after a one-and-a-half year journey of about 100 million km.

STRUCTURE

Radius: » 3400 km (2125 miles).

Mass: 1/10 that of the Earth.

Composition:

Crust Probably un-fractured because there is no evidence of folded mountains.

Mantle Unknown.

Core Probably metallic.

ATMOSPHERE AND CLIMATE

95% carbon dioxide (CO₂) plus about 3% nitrogen (N₂). Carbon dioxide (dry ice) snow falls at the poles during winter.

Pressure at surface: 1/100 times Earth's atmospheric pressure.

Noon temperature (at equator) about 10 degrees C (about 50 F).

Night Temperature (at equator) about -55 degrees C (about -67 F).

Very cold polar regions.

Very dry; though there is some evidence of a warmer climate millions of years ago. If there is water on Mars the bulk of it may be frozen in permafrost.

MARTIAN LANDSCAPE

Moons Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Panic); discovered in 1877. (Interestingly, in his fantasy tale Gulliver's Travels, Jonathon Swift imagined that Mars might be adorned with satellites.)

Canyon Valles Marineris (N. Hemisphere). This canyon is much larger than the Grand Canyon on Earth.

Volcano Olympus Mons-25 km (16 mile) high!

Dunes

         Pathfinder Landing Site