Mars
What is Mars?
Planets· Diameter 6,779 km. The red desert world, home to the solar system's tallest volcano. Rovers roam its surface today, and Japan's MMX heads for its moon Phobos in 2027.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Mars is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=mars — location and time set automatically, no login.
Orbit and size
| Diameter | 6,779 km |
|---|---|
| Distance | 1.52 AU |
| Year | 687 d |
| Day | 24h 37m |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Moons of Mars
Related events
- Mariner 4 — first close-ups of Mars
- Viking 1 — to the surface of Mars
- Curiosity launch — Mars rover
- MMX launch — Martian moon sample return(planned)
- Tianwen-3 — Mars sample return bid(planned)
- Mars transfer window — next departure(planned)
Frequently asked
- How big is Mars?
- 6,779 km.
- How far is Mars from Earth?
- 1.52 AU.
- How long is a day on Mars?
- 24h 37m.
- What are the main moons of Mars?
- Phobos, Deimos.
- Where is Mars in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Why Martian seasons run to extremes
Mars's axis is tilted 25.2°, close to Earth's 23.4°, but its orbital eccentricity of 0.093 is six times Earth's, so seasons differ sharply in length and strength between the hemispheres. Southern summer comes when Mars is near perihelion and is short and hot; northern summer falls near aphelion and is long and mild — unlike Earth, whose seasons are nearly symmetrical.
That is why Martian dust storms cluster in southern summer. Around perihelion the Sun heats the ground, dust lifts off, and every few years a storm grows to envelop the whole planet and hide the sky for weeks. The global storm of 2018 was the end of the solar-powered rover Opportunity. With a Martian year of 687 days, the whole cycle comes round nearly twice as slowly as on Earth.
The planet in depth
Mars is both the most Earth-like planet and a world engraved with the memory of water: dried riverbeds, deltas, lakebed sediments. Three billion years ago Mars had rivers and seas; some of that water survives today in the polar caps and buried ice.
It is also a planet of superlatives. Olympus Mons rises 22 km — two and a half Everests — and Valles Marineris runs 4,000 km, long enough to span the continental US. Yet with 38% of Earth's gravity and under 1% of its air pressure, liquid water can no longer linger on the surface.
From the 26-month launch windows to rover sites and the MMX Phobos sample return, the orbit view replays Mars's missions and trajectories.
Martian sunsets invert Earth's: dust turns the daytime sky pink, and at dusk only the halo around the Sun glows blue. On the surface right now, Perseverance has sealed samples that may hold traces of ancient life, awaiting the Mars Sample Return campaign being designed to fetch them. That the first planet humans set foot on will be Mars is about as close to consensus as spaceflight gets.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.