Planet Mars

 

Planèt Mars [Ayisyen] | Planète Mars [Français] | Planet Mars [English]

The planet Mars is one of the 8 planets in our solar system, it is on the inner part of the solar system, like the 3 other telluric planets, Mercury, Venus and Earth.

Telluric planets are made of rock. This means they have surfaces that can allow you to walk on them; When you observe the planet Mars in the sky from the surface of the Earth, it appears as a red star. It's not the little red, it's very red!: this used to sharp the curiosity of astronomers for a long time, because it was the only one among the planets that they could observe, and this used to make them think that it might have extraterrestrials lives on it.

So today, we will make a short summary of this planet. Come closer to hear and understand. Ask questions too, because Captain Astro is here to help with astronomy in your home language

There is an astronomer named Christiaan Huygens who calculated the period of rotation of the planet from the year 1659 when he had a good look at it through a telescope. This is how he came to notice that there is a small part of its surface that is a bit dark that appears and reappears every 24 hours, which means that the planet would have a rotation period that would be similar to our Earth; well, later, astronomers will confirm that the rotation of the planet Mars is not too different from the rotation time of the Earth: 23 hour and 54 minutes.

There was an Italian astronomer at the end of the 19th century who will spread the idea of extraterrestrials even more, he was called Giovani Schiaparelli. He reported, in 1877, in his observations that he saw at least 40 small canals on the surface of the planet Mars, in his language it is “canali”; and the direct translation into channel will draw the attention of many people to this record, a record that will make them think of an advanced civilization on Mars that can build a channel to make water from the north pole of the planet, where they have observed the polar ice caps, and make the water reach the equatorial area of the planet which appears arid, very dry.

It is clear that it was speculation, but that did not prevent another astronomer, Percival Lowell, who had good money, to finance the construction of an astronomical observatory in Arizona, in the United States, to observe the planet Mars. This is how he will observe, at the end of the 19th century, 160 such channels on the planet Mars. All these observations will make people believe more in the idea that was already circulating that the Martians had water problems on their planet, which forced them to build these canals to irrigate other areas; moreover, these ideas were well developed in a SF novel of the time, a novel called "War of the Worlds" written by HG Wells in 1898.

Well, these stories allow us to understand better how necessary it is not to rush to take the way we see something, nor the way we perceive it, for truth. It often requires several people to make several observations of a phenomenon and try to have several explanations or theories before we rush to say what the truth is. That's how the scientific method works. Nowadays, there are several small robots such as Curiosity, Perseverance, which are on this planet and are sending us a lot of pictures to evaluate the surface of the planet and there are no extraterrestrials or advanced civilizations on that planet. .

After many searches for life on the planet, not even a single bacterial cell has been found: the surface of Mars is completely sterile. But the scientists will continue to search, especially in the subsoil part, under the bottom, where maybe there was still liquid water... maybe... because we all know how important water can be to create life, even if it would be a bacteria. Well, the researchers have hope, even if it would be a bacterial fossil we would only find, it would be a great answer to the fundamental question that humans are always asking: is it true that there is only life on Earth.

Among the telluric planets, after Earth, only Mars could have given the chance for life to appear, even if it was far in the past. After that, it would perhaps be on the moon of some giant planets that are outside the orbit of the main asteroid belt, more precisely, astronomers have ideas about it for some moons such as Europa (Jupiter), and Titan, and Ganymede. As robotic space missions are scheduled to study these moons in even greater detail, we await direct observations and experiments to confirm or revise theories about extraterrestrial life in the solar system. We must understand well, when we talk about extraterrestrials, we do not strictly mean extraterrestrial civilizations, we mainly want to talk about life even in the form of cells, even in the form of ancient fossil bacteria that are no longer alive, because in this case, that would mean at least there was life once, where they would find that fossil. Well, the search for life is so complicated, even with a bacterial fossil, we would have to be satisfied...until we find more.

Let's go back to the planet Mars.

The amount of matter that makes up this planet makes it have a mass equal to 6.42 x 10²³ kg, this means six hundred forty-two sextillion kg; It's not really a big number: it's a value that represents only 10% of the matter that makes up the Earth; this is a notion called mass. Therefore, the Earth is more massive than it, it would be because of the planet Jupiter which, in the past when the planets were forming, reached almost the orbit of Mars and would thus prevent it from finding all the matter that would made it more massive than it is today. Well, the movement of Jupiter at that time caused many problems in the area, such as the asteroid belts that were supposed to form a planet, but Jupiter's gravity scattered them. We talked about this in another video already.

On the surface of the planet Mars, there are plains, cliffs, canyons, craters and volcanoes, like you could find on other telluric planets and some moons of giant planets. Some small things the ancient astronomers began to observe in the 19th century, but the telescopes were not very precise , which caused them to make some small mistakes as we have seen recently. But with advancing technology, telescopes have become larger and more precise. Well, with space probes that will be placed in orbit or even land on the surface of the planet, cartography and good chemical and geological analysis will be done. There is even a mission that is expected to collect samples to send back to Earth... a lot of suspense... Well, that is nothing compared to the mission that is preparing to send people to Mars. Although so far we have seen this in SF movies, it is not impossible at the level of fundamental and technological knowledge we now have about astronomy and astronautics, which are space navigation techniques.

Yet the Artemis Program to the Moon, is considered as a step in the journey to Mars. We have hope that this will be done not too long...if we manage to quickly manage the psychological problem of a person's isolation in space, because, at the current technological level of our rockets, it can take a minimum of 6 months to reach Mars. Put on that, time to explore the planet and time to come back.

Will the astronauts, who will be isolated, be able to manage human problems, will they not fight among themselves...human behavior in isolation, it is a big issue. This is what astronomers call the Pale Blue Dot syndrome, according to the first expression of a great man named Carl Sagan.

Well, let's go back to the surface of Mars... there are a lot of things, which means that from time to time we enter some other files... well, which is also important.

Since the 1970s, space probes have begun to confirm that the surface of Mars is indeed dry, and there are plains, that means flat regions compared to others with higher relief such as plateaus and mountains; there are also, I remember pointing this out recently, craters and some canyons, and especially there are a series of large volcanoes, although they are inactive now.

There is a large plain in the north of the planet, it bears the name "Vastitas Borealis", Latin words that precisely mean "desert of the north" or "desolation of the north". Again, let's be clear, when we say "plain", we don't mean the place where gardens, agriculture, the word "plain" comes from the Latin word "plana" which means flat; so the plain, on Mars, is regions low compared to the others, it is flat even if there are some small undulations, in general it open and flat. ++++

The plains in the south of the planet Mars are located higher than those in the north. The level of the southern hemisphere is 5 km higher on average from the level of the northern hemisphere, therefore, they are often called the southern plateaus.

The south also has more craters and craters.

When you properly calculate the 2 hemispheres of this planet, you understand how they are not at the same level, they are different, and the astronomers are not yet completely clear about what causes this difference. Was there a great movement of tectonic plates that would create this great unevenness? Or couldn't some big meteorite impact do that too? The discussion is open...you can send me whatever you think....

Within the limits of the separation of these 2 hemispheres, the astronomers managed to discover, mainly thanks to a NASA space probe called Mariner 9, a canyon that measures 4000 km long, which is 1/5 the circumference of the planet Mars or 19.57 times the distance of Port-au- Prince to Cap Haitien. The canyon that also bears the name of the probe that discovered it, Valles Marineris, actually has several small canyons inside it, and the deepest among them reaches 8 km, but the overall width of the canyon is 200 km. It is a beautiful geological structure, and I imagine the great pleasure the astronauts going to Mars will have when they will study the bottom of this great canyon, where they will also find many small craters and other surprises; There are also some great canyons on Earth, such as the Grand Canyon in the United States, which are also used as models to study other geological structures. After all, the geologists ended up thinking that Valles Marineris could have been created from large amounts of water that would have flowed down from the southern hemisphere, an erosion process that you can find naturally in other canyons on Earth such as the Gand Canyon in the United States, mention it 9 times smaller than him. All these comparisons would show astronomers that there was water on Mars in the past. It is the force of these falling waters that would dig the Valles Marineris canyon so deep. After all, in 2013, there is a probe called Curiosity, a robot car walking around to analyze the surface of the planet, and it discovered that the surface samples it examined have 2% water in the form of ice.

There is another analysis that points to the presence of water on Mars long ago: there are more impact craters on the surface of the southern hemisphere. This would mean that Vastitas Borealis, the plain in the northern hemisphere, we remember, then the surface of that plain would undergo remodeling that would erase the oldest craters, a remodeling where the water from the south and rest in the northern hemisphere would do on ancient impact craters. All these things could corroborate everything we have just said about water in the past.

However, it is on the southern hemisphere that astronomers find most of the volcanoes, especially the biggest ones, such as Mount Olympus, let's call it Montagne Olympique, which measures 26 km high. It is the largest mountain in the entire solar system, and its base is very large, it can be 11 times as large as Haiti and it is 10 times higher than Lasèl peak, which is the highest mountain in Haiti. It is a category of volcanoes called shields, because its lava flows over its side until it reaches the bottom, very slowly because there is no great gravity like on Earth that would pull it down faster; that's how it will end up having, after several lava flows, the shape of a shield that is deposited on the ground completely. Because the planet Mars does not have a strong force of gravity, nor the movement of plate tectonics like the Earth, this will favor the volcanic lava to flow more and more on its side. This is what will also cause the Olympic Mountain to grow to the size it is today: the largest mountain in the entire solar system, as we said recently. It is 3 times higher than the highest mountain on Earth: Mount Everest.

Even if you try to make a comparison with the highest volcanoes on Earth, such as Mauna Loa in Hawaii, you will notice that the fact that the Hawaiian Islands are moving with the tectonic plates makes the shield volcanoes no higher than 17 km.

On the planet Mars, the probes in orbit noticed around the volcanoes, there are a series of small areas that rise out like cones; they would seem to be regions, the size of a football stadium, that had water ice underneath them, and when the volcano released hot lava on them, the ice melted and the pressure of the water vapor pushed it out and would also form them as these are observed around these large craters. On Earth too, geologists often observe these phenomena, such as in Iceland where these ice volcanoes also form.

On the surface of this planet, there are also meteoritic craters, especially craters created from a few meteorites that happen to be. Thanks to a series of artificial satellites put into orbit around Mars, we have been able to detect, thanks to these impacts, the ice that was hidden under the surface.

Moreover, I must also tell you that large devices with high resolution have never demonstrated the channel and civilization that the ancient astronomers used to talk about: it was a mistake they made because the telescopes were not powerful enough at this period of time. Well, in science there are mistakes as well, and all scientists admit that science accepts corrections and new ideas, because astronomy is neither a religion nor a sect. We adapt to changes to better understand the universe

Although the surface of Mars does not have canals to impress us, there are some other things, other natural structures that appear very unusual, that stimulate our curiosity. For example, in 1976, 1 century after the Schiaparelli canals were making headlines, there was an orbiting probe called Vicking 1 that photographed something that looked like a human face on Mars. Well, I don't need to tell you how much this thing make hot headlines... scientists talk, non-scientists are talking as well...what is this thing?? It wasn't until 1998 when another more powerful probe took pictures with a better resolution, and that's when I would say that astronomers get to put an end in their discussions. Mars Global Surveyor, that's what the orbiter was called, showed that it was a mountain made of hard rock but the rock was also covered on some sides with rough terrain, so it was subjected to erosion, so they were degraded and carved with many unevennesses that finally made it appear from a distance like a human face. Well, we are clear, let's pay attention to what our brain can imagine and the reality. Scientists are familiar with how to avoid these types of perception errors.

Well, there are still other cases on Mars where if you don't look closely and do good analysis, you can run to say what is not. Like there are series of photos that would make you think of pyramids, or again with skulls. But we understand that wind erosion is created on rocks that are not solid compared to hard rocks; You can find this type of relief formation on Earth too.

Mars no longer has plate tectonics, unlike Earth which still has. Astronomers conclude that the planet has cooled, so the rocks at the bottom can't move to create a global movement on top. All this allows us to understand why Mars does not have a strong global magnetic field, similar to our planet, Earth. There can be no major earthquakes on Mars, even if the devices manage to detect some small movements of the surface that would be linked to meteorites or to some tidal forces that the Sun would produce on Mars. These small movements of the surface, anyway, produce heat, yes, it's normal, like when you rub your hands together, you'll feel warm at the end.

Remember, I told you that Mars no longer has a strong global magnetic field, the space probe Mars Global Surveyor that NASA put in orbit around the planet revealed in 1997 traces of the old magnetic field of the planet; it is found in the rocks that Mars had a long time ago a magnetic field that ended up appearing fixed in the rocks; therefore, in the past, the inside of the planet was hot and there could be a dynamo effect that would produce a strong global magnetic field. But 4 billion years ago, the planet became cold, the magnetic activity stopped and all the movement of its tectonic plates.

The activity that made the interior of the planet Mars so hot allows us to understand the origin of volcanoes on Mars. Well, we know that the largest volcano in the solar system is on this planet, we talked about it recently, yes, let's do a quick reminder. Many of the volcanoes on Mars are in the category of shield volcanoes classified by geologists, namely the category of volcanoes where the lava, the molten rock, flows on the side in great quantity instead of erupting with force like in explosive volcanoes. On Earth there are these two types of volcanoes, like in Hawaii where there are shield volcanoes, except that because of the ongoing displacement of the tectonic plate, when the lava flow has created an island, the island moves relative to the hot spot where the volcano came out, and when there is another volcanic eruption, another island will be created....so there are several islands that make up Hawaii. An example of an explosive volcano on Earth is Mount Fuji in Japan.

The crust of the planet Mars is very thick, thicker than the crust of the Earth. Therefore, when it has a volcano that is born from a hot spot, there can be no significant tectonic plate movement, the shield volcano lava flows in place for millions of years. This will cause the volcanoes to rise higher and higher. Because of this, Mount Olympus became the highest mountain in the entire solar system, and despite the mass of this large volcano on the crust, it did not collapse, it stood firm, high on the planet. Don't forget: the planet's crust is thick.

All these things make the astronomers think that there may be water that can be preserved completely under the thick crust of the planet, especially in the Vastitas Borealis region. You remember, I talked about Vastistas Borealis, the plain in the northern hemisphere.

Scientists managed to measure the thickness of the crust of the planet Mars more or less accurately: 40 km at least under Vastitas Borealis and 70 km under the high plateaus in the southern hemisphere. But the hull area at the level of separation between the 2 hemispheres, does not seem to be very well aligned.

Computer modeling shows that the core would measure 3400 km and part of it would be soft. Well, since there are ground probes like Insight that are still being analyzed, we are still waiting for the results to better understand.

Let's take a look at the atmosphere of the planet Mars to better understand its surface. The atmosphere contains a lot of CO2, 95% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, and the remaining 5% contains nitrogen, argon, water vapor and oxygen. The atmospheric pressure is small, only 60% of the Earth's atmosphere. The gravity of Mars allows however an amount of these gases to remain on the planet, but the water vapor does not remain, it escapes into space. It is because the atmosphere is not dense that water vapor, water cannot stay on Mars, like the rest of the water vapor that escapes from the planet. But it would seem a long time ago, about 2.5 billion years ago, the atmosphere was thicker and this would allow water to evaporate more difficult. All this makes us understand that there was a lot of water on Mars a long time ago. In addition to the cause of the atmospheric pressure, the astronomers evaluate that the structures discovered on the surface of the planet that would make them admit that there was even more water on the surface;

Where would the rest of these waters be today? According to the analysis made thanks to probes that analyze the surface of the planet, the rest of the water would be in the form of ice that would spread with the regolith dust that covers the planet, which would prevent some frozen lakes from forming on the surface; there is a lot of ice under the poles too. There is also a small amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, but it is 30 times smaller than the water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere.

Although the atmosphere of Mars is not thick, the planet has almost the same season as Earth. It would be mainly because of the inclination of its axis of 25 degrees. We remind you that the Earth's axis is inclined by 23.5 degrees. While for the Earth, the tilt of the axis would be more stable thanks to the Moon that keeps it firm, for Mars, things are completely different; It would seem that the inclination of the planet's axis would vary every few million years, because the 2 small natural satellites it has are too small to keep its degree of inclination stable as our Moon does for us on Earth. It would seem to be a big collision that would cause the 25 degree tilt for the planet Mars, like what happened to the Earth when it collided with our Moon. It would also seem to be the big collision that would cause this big difference between the northern and southern hemispheres: remember, I told you that the southern hemisphere is higher than the northern one. The seasons are 3 times longer than the seasons on Earth, because Mars takes more time to circle the Sun; when you observe Mars through a telescope, you will see these seasonal changes easily because it has an impact on the appearance of the ice caps at the poles and also on the dust that spreads in the atmosphere, which makes it redder, redder than ever as said in the beginning.

The sky of Mars appears red, we began to understand this from observations in the telescope. It is because of the dust that spreads in the atmosphere, dust that includes a lot of iron dioxide, what we call the rust. When the winter season arrives, ice dioxide usually mixes with these dusts, making them heavier and making them fall more easily on the surface, and that's what usually makes the sky less red in those days. But when summer comes, the reverse happens and the planet appears redder, a lot of dust is completely dispersed. This usually gives some devices on the surface problems when the solar panels are completely covered with dust, and they usually have to hibernate, sleep during periods when there is a lot of dust, especially during storms. And then they wake up to continue working. This happened to some rovers like Opportunity. NASA will also learn from this, that is why the last vehicles sent to Mars such as Curiosity and Perseverance use nuclear energy instead, so dust or not dust, they have the energy to continue the work of scientific exploration.

The seasons make the temperature vary on the surface, between -85 and -30 degrees C; when it rises, and if the atmospheric pressure were to drop lower in a small area, there are dust vortices that may appear, the vortices are often nicknamed "dust devil" or "dust devil" in English. These whirlwinds usually rise high, up to 12 km of altitude, and it is not only the rovers, the cars on Mars, that only see them; even the orbiters used to observe them live.

Well, we understand that there are strong winds on Mars, winds that allow erosion on the surface. These erosions have been observed for a long time, and astronomers have also observed where some craters are beginning to be covered with dust. But since the atmosphere is not that thick, it is not a great erosion and a great dust cover that spreads beyond that, as it could be if it were the Earth.

Well, let's take a look back at the record of water on Mars. We remember that the ancient astronomer at the end of the 19th century thought that there were water channels from the poles that lead water to the desert equator of Mars. Well, they made a mistake, really, especially in the way they interpreted what the telescopes could not demonstrate. However, the great apparatus of modern astronomy shows that there are ways where rivers flowed long ago on the surface of the planet; they objectified the presence of mouths, deltas and where these rivers used to fall or exit some lakes. They also found sediments and some other indicators that confirm that water used to sleep or pass through some regions. Some ancient river routes even reach the bottom of some craters. On Earth too, we find many river roads that make their paths like this, turning around on several sides before going to lakes or ending up on the sea.

Small cars that are traveling the surface of the planet, small cars are called rovers in English, and these small geologists' cars detect several molecules that confirm the presence of water on the surface: such as hematite, a special molecule that needs water to form it; scientists found a series of salts that would have formed if only they were in water. All this is evidence that there was liquid water on Mars. This makes them ask questions to know if there was life on that planet too... The only thing we know is that today there is no life on the surface; Bacterial research does not give positive results. But in the liquid water that may still be completely below, far below the thick crust, are there some bacteria still there? We don't know yet...and we can't rush to say that there is no life. We are waiting for the time when we will be able to drill far down into the crust...something that is not easy at all...even on Earth...worse on Mars.

When humans descend directly to Mars to do the work directly in place of space probes....maybe then we will have definitive answers about life on Mars. We will know if we are truly alone in the universe....Is it only on Earth that life appeared? Many fundamental questions in science.

Don't forget, the surface of the planet Mars will continue to evolve naturally, such as some landslides due to some meteorites that would produce a small earthquake; there are also some avalanches, especially in the polar areas; there are some dune-like piles that can form or move due to wind, eddies; All these cases prove that there is a dynamism of the surface anyway, even though there would be no real water. There are astronomers who think that liquid water can appear in some seasons, but there is no direct observation of this, because with an atmospheric pressure that is only 60% of the atmospheric pressure on Earth, all the liquid water that would appear would evaporate quickly to go in space. There are many space probes in orbit such as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and others that continue to research the water record and geology of Mars. We have already talked about the rovers, which are doing the same exploratory work.

In fact, there are many other things to discuss here about the search for water and fossil traces of life on Mars, but we would rather reserve that for a special episode. Let's now take a look at the 2 natural satellites the planet has. Of the 4 telluric planets, which are on the inside of the solar system, only Earth and Mars have natural moons or satellites. The Earth's moon is very large compared to our planet, it is the only one that has this proportion; for Mars itself, it is 2 moons that look like 2 asteroids the planet would also keep in orbit. There is still debate about the origin of the small moons of Mars; there is a theory that appeared in 2021 that would make it clear that there is data that would explain that these 2 small moons would be pieces of the planet Mars that would rise high in orbit after a major impact would occur on the planet. In fact, none of these theories have been verified, except that the photos show that they look very similar to asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt, they look like large pieces of potato in orbit, with a lot of impact marks meteorites on them.

The moon and these irregular shapes, the astronomers call them Deimos and Phobos, names that mean "fear" and "panic" ... we all know that Mars, in the mythology of the ancients, was a god of war. ..it is not surprising that the moons have these names. After all, these names are also the names of the 2 children of Mars and Aphrodite, a goddess of love...terrible...we understand. Astronomers discovered these small moons in 1877. Phobos measures 22.2 kilometers on average as a span, and Deimos which is smaller and has fewer craters on it has a span of 2.4 kilometers., and also both rotates in the same direction as the rotation of the planet. Phobos is closer to the planet than Deimos, and it creates a tidal force similar to our Moon's on Earth. Finally, it will collide with the planet to create a small ring in about 50 million years.

Currently, there are several missions planned to send astronauts to Mars. NASA, on the other hand, is working on the Artemis program, we already said yes recently. This mission first aims to bring people back to our Moon at the end of 2026, and it would be a step, a preparation for people to go to Mars after that.

There are other space agencies, such as Space X, which also have ambitions to send people to Mars. Elon Musk, who is the founder of SpaceX, envisions sending people to Mars in 10 years; that is why he is having the engineers build a spaceship called Starship.

But I must also tell you, the exact date and time frame for people to actually go to Mars may vary depending on the technological progress made in the space sector. There are also many financial and technical challenges. In addition, there is the notion of the psychological balance of the astronauts when they make such a long journey, we have already addressed this case, because they will be alone, and if, God forbid, something happens while they are on their way to ' on Mars, they will be trully alone, on their own to find solution. It's not just about mechanical dysfunction, they can fight with each other, there can be what is called mutiny on board... don't forget, we are human and history shows that we often cannot get along with each other, and when they are isolated like that in space.. .many bad ideas and things can happen in this regard if they do not have good psychological balance.

Anyway, let's go exploring and we will explore the planet Mars directly. Stay tuned, we will bring more information about the Mars file. In the meantime, Captain Astro appreciated the moments of astronomical science we spent together, and if there are any questions do not hesitate to ask them on the forums or directly on WhatsApp at 38407775.

Keep it up and see you soon.