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"
On the Possibility of Ascending to Mars
19/10/2005
On another October 19, in 1899, a 17 year-old Robert Goddard climbed a cherry tree on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Worcester, Massachusetts. Inspired by H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and gazing out across a meadow, young Goddard imagined it would be wonderful to make a device that had the possibility of ascending to Mars. Forever more he felt his life had a purpose and in the following years his diary entries record October 19th as "Anniversary Day", the anniversary of his ascent into the cherry tree. By 1926 he had designed, built, and flown the world's first liquid fuel rocket. Mars is just visible through the trees at the lower right in this dramatic sky view that also features the Moon and Venus -- all visited by liquid fuel rockets constructed on principles developed by Goddard.