Mars Essay

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Mars is the fourth planet from the sun at about 228 million-km (141 million miles) and the last terrestrial planet from the sun. The next five planets in order from the sun are gaseous. Mars follows closely behind Earth but is comparatively smaller, with about half the diameter of Earth and about one-tenth of Earth’s mass. Thus the force of gravity on Mars is about one-third of that on Earth. Though it is much smaller, Mars does have the same surface land area as Earth. Other than Earth, Mars posses the most highly varied and interesting known terrain in our solar system. The surface of Mars is a very hostile place however it is more like Earth’s surface than any other planet in our solar system.
Much of the Martian surface …show more content…

It is approximately four thousand kilometers across, ten kilometers high, and contains twelve large volcanoes. The largest volcanoes in the Tharsis region are four sheild volcanoes named Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, Arsia Mons, and Olympus Mons. The Tharsis Montes (Ascraeus, Pavonis, Arsia) are located on the crest of the crustal bulge and their summits are about the same elevation as the summit of Olympus Mons, the largest of the Tharsis volcanoes. While not the largest of the Tharsis volcanoes, Arsis Mons has the largest caldera on Mars, having a diameter of one hundred twenty kilometers!
The largest of the volcanoes in the Tharsis region, as well as all known volcanoes in the solar system, is Olympus Mons. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano 624 km in diameter (approximately the same size as the state of Arizona), 25 km high, and is rimmed by a 6 km high scarp. A caldera 80 km wide is located at the summit of Olympus Mons. To compare, the largest volcano on Earth is Mauna Loa. Mauna Loa is a shield volcano 10 km high and 120 km across. The volume of Olympus Mons is about one hundred times larger than that of Mauna Loa. In fact, the entire chain of Hawaiian islands would fit inside Olympus …show more content…

Valles Marineris is 4000 km long and reaches depths of up to 7 km! For comparison, the Grand Canyon in Arizona is about 800 km long and 1.6 km deep. In fact, the extent of Valles Marineris is as long as the United States and it spans about 20 percent of the entire distance around Mars! The canyon extends from the Noctis Labyrinthus region in the west to the chaotic terrain in the east. Most researchers agree that Valles Marineris is a large tectonic “crack'; in the Martian crust, forming as the planet cooled, affected by the rising crust in the Tharsis region to the west, and subsequently widened by erosional forces. However, near the eastern flanks of the rift there appear to be some channels that may have been formed by

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