Mars
We have researched our report on Mars, The Red Planet. It is called the red planet because of its reddish color. Why is it red? That is explained later in our report. The name Mars originally came from the Roman god, Ares. Did you know that water has been frozen at Mars polar ice caps for the past 3.8 to 3.5 billion years? Life is thought to have once been on Mars but now there is no life on the surface, but some scientist theorize that the pressure from the dirt could be enough to allow liquid water and some forms of life. If you like what we've said so far read on!
Mars has a very interesting geography similar to Earth's. Its crust is heavily oxidized and has some rust. Loose rocks can be found all over the plants but Mars has no active volcanoes. The dark areas found around the planet are thought to consist of terrestrial basalt. There is ice around the poles on Mars too! Craters cover the soil all over this tiny planet. When Earth and Mars are closest they are about 55 million km. apart (34 million miles) and its distance from the sun is about 227,900,000 km. It has a surface area of about 141,600,00 miles squared and a diameter of 6,780 km. (4217 mi). One martian year is about 687 earth days and 1 day is 24:37:23 seconds long. The present tilt of Mars is 25 degrees. The planet revolves about 15 mi./sec. in a counter clockwise position. Mars is only 1/2 the size of Earth and 2 times the size of the moon but has the same amount of land as Earth's continents. Its density is 3.9 g./cm. and is only 1/10 the mass of Earth. It has no magnetic field and we can tell it has a solid core because it doesn't have a radiation belt. It could be dangerous to return martian soil to Earth because it could be contaminated with unknown diseases.
Mar's atmosphere consists of 1.6% argon, 95.5% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, and minor amounts of oxygen, carbon monoxide, and some water vapor. The mean surface temperature is -23 degrees Celsius (-19 degrees Fahrenheit or 220 Kelvin). At the polar ice caps during the night it's 45 Kelvin (-199 degrees F.) and at the equator it is 300 Kelvin (80 degrees F.) during the midday perihelion. The pressure is 1/100 th of Earth's but varies through seasons and elevation. The frigid but active atmosphere goes through many daily and seasonal temperature changes.
Mars has two moons, Phobes and Demos. Phobes means fear in Greek and demos means terror. Phobes is 21 km. across (approximately 13 mi.) and Demos is 12 km. across (approximately 7.5 mi.).
Mars is the superb planet to be colonized by humans. It is close to Earth, it has water at its polar caps, and has similar geography to Earth's. The Viking space craft has already been on Mars and we know much about it.The first step to colonizing Mars is to send robots there to learn even more about this new planet. Mean-while we could be building a space station on the moon to use it later on as a jump point. Then we could send people to Mars using the moon as a jump point. People could build mining factories to mine some of the minerals and set up a biosphere. The pollution caused by the factories would cause a green house effect making a artificial atmosphere. The air pressure lowers and the Ice caps begin to melt filling up what used to be rivers and oceans long ago. At this point there are numerous space colonies on Mars and people live there until the ice caps melt. People test the atmosphere and start planting plant life outside of the biosphere on the better soil. Eventually the plants clean up the left over carbon dioxide in the air and the dead plants decompose forming better soil. As the final step, people start living outside the biosphere and it becomes a second Earth with now a much easier and quicker way to travel from planet to planet.
As you can see this is a very interesting planet with much potential.