Portal:Mars

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The Mars Portal

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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in our solar system. It is named after the Roman god of war Mars (Ares in Greek mythology) because of its apparent red color. This feature also earned it the nickname "The Red Planet". The prefix areo- refers to Mars in the same way geo- refers to Earth. The astronomical symbol for Mars is ♂, a circle with an arrow pointing northeast. The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese cultures refer to the planet as 火星, or fire star. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features such as craters, giant valleys, and volcanoes. Of all the planets in our Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbor liquid water, and perhaps life. Mars is currently host to several orbiting spacecraft and two rovers, and most recently, a lander searching for water in the north polar region. It has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and oddly-shaped, possibly being captured asteroids.

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Orion is a spacecraft design currently under development by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Each Orion spacecraft will carry a crew of four to six astronauts, and will be launched by the Ares I, a launch vehicle also currently under development. Both Orion and Ares I are elements of NASA's Project Constellation, which plans to send human explorers back to the Moon by 2020, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the solar system. On August 31, 2006, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin (LM) the contract to design, develop, and build Orion. Orion will launch from Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center, the same launch complex that currently launches the Space Shuttle. NASA will use Orion spacecraft for its human spaceflight missions after the last Shuttle orbiter is retired in 2010. The first Orion flight is scheduled at the end of 2014 or beginning of 2015 with future flights to the Station. If commercial orbital transportation services are unavailable, Orion will handle logistic flights to the International Space Station. After that Orion is to become a key component of human missions to the Moon and Mars.

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Credit: Uploaded by User:Debivort

This image shows the north polar layered deposits at top and darker materials at bottom exposed in a scarp at the head of Chasma Boreale, a large canyon eroded into the layered deposits. The polar layered deposits are ice-rich and are probably responsible for the pattern of fractures seen near the top of the scarp. It appears that brighter, ice-rich layers were deposited between dark dunes in places.

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Requests: Anseris Mons, D'Arrest (Phobos crater), Turma (crater)
Wikify: Marpost
Merge: Sojourner (rover), Mars landing, Gillevinia straata, Mars Scout 2013
Verify: Exploration of Mars, Mars in fiction
Cleanup: Terraforming of Mars,
Expand: MAVEN (spacecraft)
Stubs: Hale (Martian crater), Olympia Undae, Yuty (crater), Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) 2006, more...

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WikiProjects


	WikiProject Mars

WikiProject Solar System	WikiProject Space	WikiProject Astronomical objects

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Did you know?

...that the ship Fram (pictured), used for expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, has a crater on Mars named after it?
...that Michael C. Malin, the CEO of Malin Space Science Systems, won the 2005 Carl Sagan Memorial Award?
...that MAVEN is the spacecraft that was selected to be the Mars Scout mission in 2013?
...that Phobos-Grunt, a sample return probe destined for Phobos, is the first Russian interplanetary mission since Mars 96?