The Geology Of Mars : It Encompasses The Scientific Study Of Mars

The geology of Mars, sometimes called arcology

, encompasses the scientific study of Mars and its physical properties, its landforms, its composition, its history, and all phenomena that have affected or even affect this planet.

This is a relatively new discipline, which opened July 14, 1965 at the first flyby of Mars by spacecraft, Mariner 4 in this case, which allowed to discover a planet with no global magnetic field, with cratered surface resembling that of the moon, and a thin atmosphere with a surface pressure of 600 Pa and an average temperature of 210 K (-63 C). But it was really with the probe Mariner 9 that the systematic and thorough study of the planet Mars began, November 13, 1971; first craft to orbit around a planet other than Earth, Mariner 9 mapped the entire Martian surface with a resolution between 100 m and 1 km per pixel, revealing all the major geological structures in the world, its crustal dichotomy, its volcanic mountains and huge canyon system called Valles Marineris in reference to the Mariner program in general, and Mariner 9 in particular.

Since the Viking program in the late 1970s, the Phobos program in the late 1980s, and missions Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Pathfinder in 1990, helped refine our knowledge about Mars. More recently, the "Orbiter" 2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express and the rovers Spirit and Opportunity on the ground, supplemented by the "lander" Phoenix has pioneered in the 2000s, real geological survey of Mars, which is expected to continue in 2012 with the U.S.

Mission and the Mars Science Laboratory mission Russian Phobos-Grunt, which will carry the small Chinese satellite Yinghuo one to study the interaction of solar wind and the atmosphere of Mars even at more distant future, with the European ExoMars rover, of Aurora, to analyze the soil of Mars to search for traces of past or present exobiology, and with the Mars Sample Return, joint venture between ESA and NASA, designed to bring a few hundred grams of samples of Martian soil to Earth.

The systematic study of the red planet has radically transformed the vision we have. Mars today is perceived as a planet with its rich and geologically very active, once surrounded by a global magnetic field, and then almost certainly had a thick atmosphere and vast quantities of liquid water rather than acid. Moreover, its nucleus would still largely or entirely liquid, and it is not totally excluded that some volcanoes can still enjoy an occasional activity.

Fourth planet in the solar system in order of increasing distance from the Sun, Mars is a terrestrial planet half as large as Earth and nearly ten times less massive, the surface is slightly lower than the land surface of our planet ( 144.8 against 148.9 million km2). The gravity is one third that of Earth, while the duration of a solar day on Mars called ground exceeds that of the Earth day to just under 40 minutes.

Mars is one and a half times farther from the Sun than the Earth in an orbit substantially more elliptical, and receives, according to its position on this orbit, between two and three times less solar energy than our planet. The atmosphere of Mars is in addition more than 150 times less dense than ours and therefore do not generate a greenhouse very limited, low solar radiation explains that the average temperature on Mars is less than -60 C.

March is about ten times less massive than Earth but ten times more massive than the Moon, its surface has similarities with these two planets. There are land riddled with impact craters resembling those of the Moon, but also training of tectonic and climate as on Earth, including volcanoes, rift valleys, mesas, dune fields and caps. The thin Martian atmosphere, which clouds moving locally abundant, is the seat of a particular weather, dominated by dust storms which sometimes obscure the entire planet.

Its orbital eccentricity five times stronger than Earth is the source of a very sensitive seasonal asymmetry on Mars in the northern hemisphere, the longest season is spring (198.6 days), which exceeds the shortest (Fall, 146.6 days) of 35.5 on Earth, was the longest season, exceeding the duration of the winter than 5. This feature also explains that the area of the southern polar cap is reduced significantly more in summer than the northern polar cap.

The astronomical symbol of Mars is a circle with an arrow pointing north-east (Unicode 0x2642). In alchemy, this symbol is associated with iron (which is red oxide) and may indicate an iron mine on the cards. March putting a little less than two years to orbit the Sun, its symbol is the biennial plants .This symbol is a stylized representation of the shield and spear of the god Mars. In biology, the same symbol is used as a bookmark for the male sex.

Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is a bestseller by John Gray published in 1992.The color red is associated with Mars. He also associates the violence, anger, war: all the usual attributes of the god Mars.Lhypothatique correlation between the position of Mars relative to the horizons at the time of birth and the fate of some sport is called Mars effect.

In the photos taken by Viking 1, July 25, 1976, during its 35th orbit, there are structures in Cydonia Mensae pretend that artificial face gigantic pyramids. This story is repeated in the sci-fi American Mission to Mars in 2000 directed by Brian De Palma.

by: Laura Steinfield

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