10 Amazing Facts About Planet Mars | Solar System | Space | Milky Way

Would you like to blast off into space and journey to Mars? Living there would be very different to Earth. Read these facts about Mars for kids and then imagine what it will be like if you had joined Perseverance on the Mission to Mars. Maybe you could write your own space story about it!

1. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. It is a terrestrial planet which means that like Earth it has a hard, rocky surface you can walk on.
2. Mars is called the Red Planet because of all the iron in the soil. This iron rusts and as a result, makes the surface and atmosphere look red.
3. Mars may look warm but it’s very cold. The average temperature is -62 degrees Celsius. Yikes!
4. Mars has two moons, and their names are Phobos and Deimos.
5. Mars can have huge dust storms which last for months and can cover the entire planet.
6. A day on Mars is 24.6 hours, not much longer than an Earth day, but a year on Mars is 687 Earth days long. That’s almost twice as long as an Earth year. (Imagine only celebrating your birthday every two Earth years!)
7. You’d be able to jump much higher on Mars because it has weaker gravity than Earth, and this means you’d weigh less too. Head to this website to find out how much you would weigh on Mars.
8. The atmosphere on Mars is about 100 times thinner than the Earth’s atmosphere, and it has very little oxygen. You wouldn’t be able to breath the Martian air and would need a spacesuit with oxygen when you went outdoors.
9. Humans haven’t been to Mars yet, but NASA has sent several rovers there already, and Perseverance is the fifth. The first one was called Sojourner and it landed in 1997. Spirit and Opportunity landed in 2004, and the last time NASA landed a rover on Martian soil was in 2012. Visit NASA’s Space Place landing page and learn more about what NASA Mars rovers do.
10. In 2018, NASA’s Curiosity rover found signs which scientists think mean there once was life on Mars. Perseverance’s job will be to dig deeper – literally - by drilling into the surface!