♂ Inner Solar System
Mars
A ghost of a planet. Rust-red and silent.
Mars is a ghost of a planet. Once it had rivers, lakes, perhaps even oceans. Now it is rust-red and silent, scoured by iron dust storms that can swallow the entire planet. Its atmosphere is a thin whisper — 1% of Earth's. Its largest volcano, Olympus Mons, is so wide it would cover France. We keep sending machines to its surface. They keep finding evidence of a world that was once alive, and is now very much not.
"A world that was once alive, and is now very much not."
Key Data
Distance from Sun
Surface Temperature
Day Length
Moons (Phobos, Deimos)
Olympus Mons
Orbital Speed
Diameter
Surface Gravity
One Remarkable Thing
Olympus Mons is so vast that if you stood on its surface, the curvature of Mars would hide its edges below the horizon. You would not know you were on a volcano at all.
Scale Relative to Earth
Mars's diameter is 6,779 km — about half of Earth's. Deceptively small for a world once capable of holding oceans.