Mars: everything you need to know about the Red Planet

Mars: everything you need to know about the Red Planet - Mars shares its name with the Roman god of war and is the most talked-about celestial body in recent years. It is currently being explored by eight spacecrafts (six orbiting and two on its surface), but Man has still yet to step foot on it. The 'Red Planet' is the solar system's most Earth-like planet, however, its atmosphere is thinner and its surface is mainly rocky. Click here to learn more!

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One-way trip - Over 100 thousand people have signed up with the Mars One project, whose goal is to colonize Mars in 2022.

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Sunset - Several images sent by robots on Mars show that the sunset is blue.

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One year - On Mars, a year equals 687 days on Earth.

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Mountain - Mars has the biggest volcano recorded in the Solar System - it is 22km high and it is called Olympus Mons.

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Color - Mars is red because it is covered in iron oxide.

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Cinema - The movie 'Gravity' was more expensive than the whole Indian Mars Orbiter Mission. The movie costed around $100 million and the Indian space mission costed $72 million.

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Temperature - According to the official NASA website, the planet's average temperature is -62ºC.

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Weight - Due to the planet's atmosphere, the weight of a human on Mars is 60% lighter than on Earth.

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Solitude - After spending a year on Mars' surface, NASA's Curiosity Rover sang 'Happy Birthday' to itself.

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Process - In 1997, three men from Yemen tried to sue NASA for trespassing on Mars, which according to them, was a heritage left by their ancestors three thousand years ago.

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Website - On google.com/mars, you can see infrared pictures of the planet's soil and several elevation points.

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Size - Mars is half the size of Earth.

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Soil - It has been reported that the Martian soil is especially good for growing asparagus.

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Moons - Mars only has two moons, one more than Earth and 65 less than Jupiter.

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Flag - Many don't know, but Mars has its own flag which was designed by NASA employee, Pascal Lee, in 1998.

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Atmosphere (illustrative picture) - Through the data collected by NASA rovers on Martian soil, it was concluded that, four billion years ago, the planet was rich in oxygen.

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Letter price - According to NASA, sending a letter to Mars would cost $18,000.

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Naked eye - Mars is one of the five planets that you can actually see from Earth, along with Venus, Jupiter, Mercury and Saturn.

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Storms (illustrative picture) - Mars is the planet with the largest number of sandstorms registered in the whole of the Solar System. They can last for months and cover the whole planet.

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Craters - All the craters found on Mars that are over 60km wide are given names of scientists, writers and others that contributed to studying the planet.

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Craters part 2 - Those smaller than 60km wide are given the names of cities on Earth that have less than 100 thousand inhabitants.

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Dangers - Mars is close to the asteroid belt, so it is more likely to be hit by debris.

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First one (illustrative picture) - The first spaceship to successfully arrive close to the planet was the Mariner 4 in 1965.

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Lichen - The German Aerospace Center (DLR) discovered that lichen can survive on Mars the same way it does on Earth.

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Distance - The distance between the Earth and Mars will slightly decrease over the next 25 thousand years.

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Galileo Galilei - Galileo Galilei was the first to see Mars through a telescope in 1610.

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Ocean - NASA studied the Martian soil and found that around 19% of the planet's surface used to be covered in water.

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Length of the day - A day on Mars lasts 44 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

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