JANUARY STUDY ** MARS**

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Mars
By Sharon Fabian

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1 There is a story called The War of the Worlds. It's about an invasion of aliens from Mars. At one time, The War of the Worlds was made into a radio play. As people everywhere turned on their radios and heard what sounded like a news broadcast about a Martian invasion, they began to panic. For a long time, people had wondered whether there was life on Mars, and now suddenly it seemed that not only were there creatures living on Mars, but the creatures were coming to attack us here on Earth.

2 Well, that was only a story, but people do have good reasons to wonder whether there might have been life forms on Mars at one time. Mars is next to the earth in the solar system, and may be more like Earth that the other planets. It has some of the same chemicals that Earth has on its surface and in its atmosphere. It has some water vapor in its air, and ice caps at the poles. Mars gets lots of sunlight, and has a solid surface to walk on.

3 However, in other ways, Mars is very different from our planet. Its atmosphere is very thin; it gets so much solar radiation that any creatures on Mars would get an instant sunburn. It is a dry and dusty planet, much of it coated with red, rusty Martian dust. The average surface temperature on Mars is about -60 degrees centigrade, way below freezing. The biggest difference of all is that Mars has no water on its surface.

4 Scientists believe that water may be one of the best signs of life on another planet, and so Mars explorations have focused on finding out whether there is, or was, any water on Mars' surface. In 1971, a spacecraft named Mariner 9 orbited Mars and found out that Mars had valleys and channels on its surface. Perhaps they were carved out by water a long time ago. In 1975, the Viking landers, Viking I and Viking II, searched for any signs of life on Mars' surface. Their results were inconclusive; they weren't able to prove whether or not there had ever been life on Mars.

5 Most scientists today probably lean towards the belief that there is no life on Mars. One of their main arguments is that, with Mars' thin atmosphere, any water on its surface would probably begin to boil away immediately. Other scientists think that water might freeze before it boiled away in Mars' strange atmosphere. There are always two sides to the question of whether there is life on Mars.

6 An interesting piece of the Mars puzzle was found in a place you would probably never expect -- Antarctica. A meteorite was found in Antarctica that was believed to have come from Mars. This meteorite had what looked like really tiny fossils. Could they be the fossils of some ancient microscopic forms of Martian life? No one knows for sure. However, the Antarctica meteorite does bring up an important point about life on Mars. If it turns out that there was life on Mars at one time, it is much more likely that it was some type of microscopic creature, something like a bacteria or a virus, rather than a movie-style space alien.

7 Now in 2004 a new Mars exploration is underway. NASA has launched two rovers into orbit around Mars in the hope that at least one will have a successful landing on Mars. Scientists point out that a Mars landing is very tricky, and in fact there have been more Mars missions so far that have failed than missions that have succeeded. On this mission, one of the rovers so far has had very good luck. On January 3, 2004, the rover "Spirit" parachuted safely to Mars surface. There it bounced on its giant air bags before finally settling down in the red dust. Slowly and carefully, Spirit began to exit from its nest of air bags. Spirit is scheduled to send back high-definition pictures of the surface of Mars, and it will explore the rocks and dust to determine their chemical makeup. In the meantime, people here on Earth keep wondering, "Could there really be life on Mars?"

Copyright © 2004 edHelper
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Name _____________________________
Date ___________________
Mars


1. This article is mainly about _____.
The solar system
The search for life on Mars
The chemicals in Mars' soil
The Viking spacecrafts

2. "Spirit" is _____.
An orbiting spacecraft
A rover
A booster rocket
An astronaut


3. Mars is _____.
Covered by oceans
A giant planet like Jupiter
A planet with a solid surface like Earth
The smallest planet in our solar system

4. Which happened first?
The War of the Worlds aired on radio
Mariner 9 orbited Mars
The rover Spirit landed on Mars
Viking I landed on Mars


5. The word inconclusive means _____.
Giving no definite proof
Negative
False
Positive

6. At the time this article was written, Spirit _____.
Was on its way to Mars
Had not been heard from
Was on its way back to Earth
Was on Mars and ready to explore


7. If Mars never had any _____, it most likely never had any life forms as we know them.
Volcanoes
Clouds
Trees
Water

8. What do you think scientists might learn from the rocks and dust that Spirit is exploring. List several ideas.

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Mars - Answer Key



1 The search for life on Mars
2 A rover
3 A planet with a solid surface like Earth
4 The War of the Worlds aired on radio
5 Giving no definite proof
6 Was on Mars and ready to explore
7 Water
8 Answers will vary.

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Name _____________________________
Date ___________________

Mars Word Search


Find each of the following words.


DRY SURFACE
NITROGEN
CARBON DIOXIDE
LARGE FLOODS
DEIMOS
THIN CRUST
EROSION
FOURTH PLANET
WEAK MAGNETIC FIELDS
RED PLANET
ICE CAPS
PHOBOS
ROCKY SURFACE
MARS
ARGON
TWO MOONS



U G A I T W O M O O N S L A R G E F L O O D S E R C P
D O F A G C C F O U R T H P L A N E T S A I E S U H H
K C P K O O O S M E C N P G A S T T P D C G O D E W E O
W E A K M A G N E T I C F I E L D S E R E E E R S E E
A W E S T M F R O O S T B D L T H I N C R U S T F O I S
E A R U A U U H C R E O S N S N C U L E R I H D S I
F R I A B P H O B O S O T R O F A O R C N U E R T C
N N R M A E I C O E A G O D M S P E F O O N S O E I N R O
A R G O N T U T O E E R E I S I D R Y S U R F A C E O
D I B O O D K D A P I N K A E E R O S I O N P O P D F P I
T R O C K Y S U R F A C E D E F S E S E N T A E N A A
U O R E D P L A N E T L E C A R B O N D I O X I D E P
N E L T O U P R I O A N E F E I G G G R O R T D R E A



Answer Key
DRY SURFACE NITROGEN CARBON DIOXIDE LARGE FLOODS
DEIMOS THIN CRUST EROSION FOURTH PLANET
WEAK MAGNETIC FIELDS RED PLANET ICE CAPS PHOBOS
ROCKY SURFACE MARS ARGON TWO MOONS



T W O M O O N S L A R G E F L O O D S
F O U R T H P L A N E T I
N C
W E A K M A G N E T I C F I E L D S E
S T T H I N C R U S T
R R S C
A P H O B O S O O A
M G M P
A R G O N E I S D R Y S U R F A C E
N E E R O S I O N
R O C K Y S U R F A C E D
R E D P L A N E T C A R B O N D I O X I D E

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See this site for pictures to this article
www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/


MARS
General
Description Statistics Moons:
Deimos and Phobos Missions to Mars Activities,
Web Links
MARS
"The Red Planet"

Mars, the red planet, is the fourth planet from the sun and the most Earth-like planet in our solar system. It is about half the size of Earth and has a dry, rocky surface and a very thin atmosphere.

MARS' SURFACE

A Mollweide projection of Mars made from four pictures taken by Hubble Space Telescope in 1999. A storm is visible in the top left near the pole.
The surface of Mars is dry, rocky, and mostly covered with iron-rich dust. There are low-lying plains in the northern hemisphere, but the southern hemisphere is dotted with impact craters. The ground is frozen; this permafrost extends for several kilometers.


Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars; it is perhaps the largest volcano in the Solar System. It is 17 miles (27 km) tall and over 320 miles (520 km) across. It is thought to be extinct.
The north and south poles of Mars are covered by ice caps composed of frozen carbon dioxide and water.





Scientists have long thought that there is no liquid water on the surface of Mars now, but recent photos from Mars indicate that there might be some liquid water near the surface. The surface of Mars shows much evidence of the effects of ancient waterways upon the landscape; there are ancient, dry rivers and lakes complete with huge inflow and outflow channels. These channels were probably caused by catastrophic flooding that quickly eroded the landscape.

Scientists think that most of the water on Mars is frozen in the land (as permafrost) and frozen in the polar ice caps.

G. Schiaparelli was an Italian astronomer who first mapped Mars (in 1877) and brought attention to the network of "canali" (Italian for canals or channels) on Mars. These "canals" were later found to be dry and not to be canals at all. A Martian impact crater (Crater Schiaparelli, 461 km = 277 mi in diameter) and a hemisphere of Mars have been named after Schiaparelli.

SIZE
Mars is about 4,222 miles (6790 km) in diameter. This is 53% (a little over half) of the diameter of the Earth.

PLANETARY COMPOSITION
Crust and Surface: Mars' surface is composed mostly of iron-rich basaltic rock (an igneous rock). Mars has a thin crust, similar to Earth's.

Mantle: Silicate rock, probably hotter than the Earth's mantle at corresponding depths.

Core: The core is probably iron and sulphides and may have a radius of 800-1,500 miles (1,300-2,400 km). More will be known when data from future Mars missions arrives and is analyzed.

MASS AND GRAVITY
Mars' mass is about 6.42 x 10^23 kg. This is 1/9th of the mass of the Earth. A 100-pound person on Mars would weigh 38 pounds.

LENGTH OF A DAY AND YEAR ON MARS
Each day on Mars takes 1.03 Earth days (24.6 hours). A year on Mars takes 687 Earth days; it takes this long for Mars to orbit the sun once.

MARS' ORBIT
Mars is 1.524 times farther from than the sun than the Earth is. It averages 141.6 million miles (227.9 million km) from the sun. Its orbit is very elliptical; Mars has the highest orbital eccentricity of any planet in our Solar System except Pluto.

ATMOSPHERE
Mars has a very thin atmosphere. It consists of 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), 3% nitrogen, and 1.6% argon (there is no oxygen). The atmospheric pressure is only a fraction of that on Earth (about 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level), and it varies greatly throughout the year.
There are large stores of frozen carbon dioxide at the north and south poles. During the warm season in each hemisphere, the polar cap partly melts, releasing carbon dioxide. During the cold season in each hemisphere, the polar cap partly freezes, capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The atmospheric pressure varies widely from season to season; the global atmospheric pressure on Mars is 25% different (there is less air, mostly carbon dioxide) during the (northern hemisphere) winter than during the summer. This is mostly due to Mars' highly eccentric orbit; Mars is about 20% closer to the Sun during the winter than during the summer. Because of this, the northern polar cap absorbs more carbon dioxide than the southern polar cap absorbs half a Martian year later.

Occasionally, there are clouds in Mars' atmosphere. Most of these clouds are composed of carbon dioxide ice crystals or, less frequently, of frozen water crystals.

There are a lot of fine dust particles suspended in Mars' atmosphere. These particles (which contain a lot of iron oxide) absorb blue light, so the sky appears to have little blue in it and is pink/yellow to butterscotch in color.



TEMPERATURE RANGE
Mars' surface temperature averages -81 °F (-63 °C). The temperature ranges from a high of 68° F(20° C) to a low of -220° F(-140° C). Mars is much colder than the Earth.

MARS' MOONS
Mars has 2 tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos. They were probably asteroids that were pulled into orbit around Mars.

SPACECRAFT VISITS
Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to visit Mars (in 1965). Two Viking spacecraft landed in 1976. Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars on July 4, 1997, broadcasting photos. For more on the Mars missions, click here.

THE FACE ON MARS
This photograph of the Cydonia Mense region of Mars was taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor in 1998. It is a coincidental alignment of rocks and other geologic formations that happens to look like a human face from this angle.

DISCOVERY OF MARS
Mars has been known since ancient times.

MARS' NAME AND SYMBOL

This is the symbol of the planet Mars.
Mars was named after the Roman god of war.

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1. Is Mars bigger, smaller, or the same size as Earth?_________________


2. Would an Earthling feel heavier, lighter, or about the same weight on the surface of Mars? (Ignore the effects of being in a weightless space capsule for an extended period of time.) _______________________


3. What are the names of Mars' two moons? _____________ and _______________


4. Mars' surface is mostly water, rock, or magma? ____________________


5. Are there polar ice caps on Mars? _____________________


6. Does Mars have any rings orbiting it? _______________________


7. What is the name of the largest-known volcano in our Solar System?_______________________


8. Is the atmosphere on Mars thick or thin? _______________________


9. What is the main component of Mars' atmosphere? ______________________


10. When did the first spaceship from Earth land on Mars? _________________

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Mars:
Cloze Activity
Fill in the blanks below. Answers
Word Bank: atmosphere
south
Deimos
Sun
permafrost colder
Roman
ice
temperature
asteroids moons
day
Earth-like
craters
fourth

Mars is the _____________________________ planet from the sun and the most _____________________________ planet in our Solar System. Mars was named after the _____________________________ god of war. Mars is about 4,222 miles (6790 km) in diameter. This is 53% (a little over half) of the diameter of the Earth. Mars' mass is about 6.42 x 1023 kg. This is 1/9th of the mass of the Earth. A 100-pound person on Mars would weigh 38 pounds.
This red planet has a very thin _____________________________ that consists of 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), 3% nitrogen, and 1.6% argon (there is no oxygen). The surface of Mars is dry, rocky, and mostly covered with iron-rich dust. There are low-lying plains in the northern hemisphere, but the southern hemisphere is dotted with impact _____________________________. The ground is frozen; this _____________________________ extends for several kilometers. The north and _____________________________ poles of Mars are covered by _____________________________ caps composed of frozen water and carbon dioxide. Mars is much _____________________________ than the Earth. Mars' surface _____________________________ ranges from a high of 68° F(20° C) to a low of -220° F(-140° C).

Each _____________________________ on Mars takes 1.03 Earth days (24.6 hours). A year on Mars takes 687 Earth days; it takes this long for Mars to orbit the _____________________________ once.

Mars has 2 tiny _____________________________, Phobos and _____________________________. They were probably _____________________________ that were pulled into orbit around Mars.

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Answers to above achttp://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/cloze/mars/answers.shtmltivity