Should Pluto be a dwarf planet or a planet? There has been lots of debate on whether it should be a dwarf planet or a planet. Their is not a big difference between the dwarf planets and the planets. The only difference between the two is that a dwarf planet has an orbit around it which is not cleared out and the orbit around a planet is cleared out. Pluto has been a dwarf planet since 2006.…
The connection between my article Mars, the red planet and The Martian by Andy Weir is that Mark Watney uses Mars’s two moons Phobos and Deimos to help him travel to the Pathfinder so he can communicate with NASA for help. When he travels at night he can’t see any of the landmarks like the craters to help him know the direction he is going so he uses Phobos and Deimos to help him travel. “Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field. So I navigate by Phobos. It whips around Mars so fast it actually rises and sets twice a day, running west to east.…
Deimos is only about sixteen kilometres long and ten kilometres wide, so it is significantly smaller that Phobos. The two moons are not very reflective, and reflect no more than six percent of the light that hits…
Many have asked the question why doesn't Mars have oceans? A recent breakthrough discovery has confirmed that liquid water does exist on Mars. This means there is the potential for life to exist here. However, this water is very minimal compared to previous levels of water found on Mars. A study done by Geronimo Villanueva and Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reveals that Mars used to have at minimum…
Pluto is the second closest dwarf planet to the sun and was at one point classified as the ninth planet. Pluto is the ninth planet from the Solar System. It’s nickname is Xena. Pluto’s origin of name is Plouton.…
Viking ½. Nasa’s Viking project found its place in US history when it became the first American mission to make it to the surface of Mars. Two of the same spaceships were built, each containing an orbiter and a lander. Th spacecraft’s both flew together when they entered the orbit of Mars. The landers separated and the began the decent to the surface of the rusty red planet known as Mars. Viking 1 touched down in the southern hemisphere while Viking 2 lander made it way to Utopia Planitea.…
It will be very difficult to colonized the red planet, because of its weather conditions. Mars have a very thin atmosphere that make it almost unsuitable to support human life (Sharp). The red planet has a much lighter gravity system than the Earth and its Oxygen level are very low (Sharp).Therefore, it would be almost impossible for humans to survive on Mars without using a lot of technology to provide them with the needed resources. One of the major problem on Mars is the atmosphere’s composition, because it is composed of 95.2 percent of Carbon Dioxide, while on Earth there is only 0.4 percent of Carbon Dioxide (Sharp). Mars is a very small planet, half the diameter of the Earth, this will reduce the amount space needed for each human and…
By 1961, the Cold War was well underway, and up until this point, the Soviet Union had greatly surpassed the United States in the space race. America’s space program, called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was waning in comparison to the space program in the USSR. The successes of the artificial satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 and the launching of Yuri Gagarin into space in 1967 had greatly embarrassed the United States. This embarrassment prompted President Kennedy to become a man on a mission to propose something bold, something monumental, and something that could change the trajectory of the nation. On May 25, 1961, he announced his goal, one that many perceived to be overly ambitious and most likely impossible, of safely landing a man on the moon and bring him him home by the end of the decade.…
Mars would be the planet to expect to show the greatest variation in apparent brightness as seen from Earth. None of the planets makes a large percentage change in its distance from the Sun. Mercury only makes a moderate change in its distance from Earth, which tends to be canceled by its phases. Mercury can hardly be seen except near Greatest Elongation, so it’s a never far from being a half-Mercury phase if visible. Venus makes a large fractional change only about 0.3 to 1.6 AU, but this is offset by the smaller fraction of illuminated surface, we see due to the phases.…
Have you ever wondered if there was a planet very similar to Earth? Well guess what, there is! Mars is a very similar planet to Earth. Even recent studies have found that there could have been life on Mars many years back. Coming from the sun Mars is the fourth planet out right behind the Earth.…
Known as the “Earth’s Sister”, Venus is the second planet from the sun. It has size and mass similar to that of Earth, having a diameter of 12,092 km (650 km less than Earth's). Venus has densest atmosphere out of the four terrestrial planets comprising 96.5% of carbon dioxide, 3.5% of nitrogen due to this the atmosphere reflects about 70% of the sunlight back into space, making the planet the second brightest natural object in the sky. Venus has been named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Venus takes 245 Earth days to rotate once its axis.…
The terrestrial planet that has the coldest surface is Mercury. At night, it has the coldest temperature and dips down to 100 K. However Mars has the coldest average surface temperature of anywhere between 160 and 280 K. Mercury has the coldest surface temperature because of its slow spin and short year. Because its the closest planet to the sun, it only takes 88 days to complete one revolution around the sun. Due to its slow spin and short year, it takes a long time for the sun to rise and set. Mercury has only one sunrise every 180 days.…
Mars’s atmosphere is less than 1% of Earth’s. The air consists of 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and the remainder is trace amounts of oxygen. Due to it’s great differences in the atmosphere Mars isn’t suitable for life. Mars is not suitale to support life because there is no air pressure and the temeratures are too cold. Mars’s atmosphere is 100X thinner than Earth’s.…
Earth and Mars orbits are different. For example, Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 149,598,261 km or one Astronomical Unit. Mars orbits at a distance of approximately 249,200,000 million km or 1.666 AU. At perihelion, when it is closest to the Sun, it orbits at a distance of approximately 206,700,000 million km or 1.3814 AU. The distance…
Scientists believe that at one time Venus had a moon. They believe that it was “slammed” early, and a piece of it was possibly a moon that drifted away. However, Venus does interact with our moon. Venus appears to be nearby our moon in the night sky and is the brightest object in the night sky besides our moon. It’s so bright that it’s known as the “Morning Star” and “Evening Star”, because it can be seen at night and occasionally during the day.…