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Planet Mars: Planet Earth
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The axis of Mars is not perpendicular to the planet's orbital plane, an imaginary plane that includes all points in the orbit. Rather, the axis is tilted from the perpendicular position. The angle of the tilt, called the planet's obliquity, is 25.19¡ for Mars, compared with 23.45¡ for Earth. The obliquity of Mars, like that of Earth, causes the amount of sunlight falling on certain parts of the planet to vary widely during the year. As a result, Mars, like Earth, has seasons.
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Although Mars has no intrinsic magnetic field, observations show that parts of the planet's crust have been magnetized and that alternating polarity reversals of its dipole field have occurred. This paleomagnetism of magnetically susceptible minerals has properties that are very similar to the alternating bands found on the ocean floors of Earth. One theory, published in 1999 and re-examined in October 2005 (with the help of the Mars Global Surveyor), is that these bands demonstrate plate tectonics on Mars 4 billion years ago, before the planetary dynamo ceased to function and caused the planet's magnetic field to fade away.[10]
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The planet Mars will be "at opposition" on Christmas Eve, meaning it will sit directly opposite the sun. It will be about as close and as bright to Earth as it ever gets.
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Dozens of spacecraft, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, have been sent to Mars by the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, and Japan to study the planet's surface, climate, and geography. Roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars have failed in one manner or another before completing or even beginning their missions. Part of this high failure rate can be ascribed to technical incompetence, but enough have either failed or lost communications for no apparent reason that some researchers half-jokingly speak of an Earth-Mars "Bermuda Triangle" or of a Great Galactic Ghoul which subsists on a diet of Mars probes.
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This picture shows planet Mars as seen from a distance of about 5.5 million kilometres. This is a very unusual view of Mars because the planet is illuminated in a way never seen from Earth. The Sun shines on part of the western hemisphere, but more than a third of the Martian disc lies in the dark. The dark features at the top are part of the northern lowlands of Mars, where oceans possibly existed thousands of millions of years ago.
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Known since ancient times when it was associated with the greek and roman gods of war, the planet mars is the fourth planet from the sun. Orbiting at a distance of between 128,412.000 and 154,861,000 miles, it had it's closest approach to earth (at 42 million miles) on wednesday 13th june 2001. This sort of close approach occurs every 779.74 days, when mars, the earth and the sun all line up. The previous closest occured over 12 years earlier. The closest approach for 60,000 years occured on 27th August 2003.
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