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Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the seventh largest in the Solar System. A cold, dusty desert world with a thin atmosphere (mostly CO₂), the planet features extinct volcanoes, deep canyons, polar ice caps, and seasons. Mars has two small moons (Phobos and Deimos), a day just over 24 hours long, and a year lasting about 687 Earth days. It is a prime focus of robotic exploration and studies about past water and habitability.

Source: science.nasa.gov

APODs including "Mars"

If You Could Stand on Mars

07/02/1996

If You Could Stand on Mars
Image Credit: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

If you could stand on Mars - what would you see? Viking 1 robot landers answered this question in 1976 with pictures like the one shown above. The dark rocks, red soil, and green-tinged sky grace this rendition of a normal Martian afternoon. At the bottom corners of the picture are portions of Viking spacecraft. The red color of the rocks is caused by an abundance of iron in the soil. The Martian surface is covered by rocks, huge craters, fantastic canyons, and gigantic volcanoes that dwarf any on Earth. No life has been found, but some speculate that since not all spacecraft reaching Mars from Earth had been fully decontaminated, Earth born microbes might live there now.