MARS Pictures taken by the Viking landers
show rolling countryside littered with
The evolution of terrestrial planets
Terrestrial planets formed by accretion
about 4.6 billion years ago.
The impacts that formed them and the
decay of their radioactive materials
heated the planets enough that their
internal temperature reached the melting
point of iron, it forms the core .
Light, silicate materials floated to the
surface and cooled to become the
planetary crusts.
The extent to which each planet has
cooled and become volcanically inactive
depends on size. The smaller planets
quickly became inactive while the larger
planets remain tectonically and
volcanically active.
The interior and evolution of mars
radioactive decays heated its interior
until iron melted and accumulated in its
core.
A clue about the nature of Marss
interior is the red reddish color of its
surface, which the Viking lander
experiments have shown to be due to
iron compounds.
rocks in the mantle melted partially to
produce magma, which flooded the
surface and produced large volcanos.
Mars expanded as it grew hotter,
perhaps causing its crust to pull apart
and produce Valles Marineris.
Mars has cooled and become less active
for the last several billion years.
The surface of Mars
a. Exploration of Mars Surface
Five spacecrafttwo Viking landers,
Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity
have successfully landed on Mars and
returned pictures and measurements
from the Martian surface.
rocks ejected from nearby impact
craters. The regions around the landers
resemble rocky deserts on the Earth.
The Pathfinder lander and the Sojourner
rover explored Ares Vallis for about 3
months in 1997.
Pathfinder images showed abundant
evidence of ancient floods while
Sojourner measured the chemical
composition of rocks and soil. The Spirit
and Opportunity rovers found strong
evidence that water once covered the
surface of Mars.
Mars Global Surveyor shows Mars to be
a planet with two different faces.
Mars south pole resembles to the
highlands of the moon.
Mars north pole sparsely cratered plains
resembling the lunar maria.
b. Tharsis Region
The northern hemisphere has many
volcanos, including several gigantic
ones in the region 19th century observers
called Tharsis.
Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, Ascraeus
Mons and Olympus Mons
The heights of the Tharsis volcanos
show that the magma that formed them
rose from great depths, where pressure
was large enough to lift the magma to
the summits of the volcanos.
c. Martian Craters
About half of the surface of Mars is
covered with ancient craters. Ejected
material appears to have flowed away
from many craters. This suggests that
there may be subsurface ice or water on
Mars.
We can estimate the ages of Martian
volcanos and lava flows by measuring
crater densities.
d. Crustal Motions
The many faults and chasms on Mars
show that there has been considerable
crustal motion. The most spectacular
example of crustal motion is the Valles
Marineris canyon system. Much of the
 crustal motion seems to have occurred
as a consequence of the weight of the
Tharsis bulge. Long ago, Mars
experienced a period of plate tectonic
activity.
e. Martian Channels
There are two kinds of Martian
Channels: Run-off channel and outflow
channel
Runoff channels look like river systems
and were cut by the collection of
underground water or rainfall.
Outflow channels were cut by
catastrophic floods produced by the
sudden release of large amounts of
underground water
Mars Global Surveyor images taken in
2002 and 2005 show that gullies are still
forming on Mars. The new gullies
suggest that Martian sand dunes may
contain water ice.
f. Polar Regions
Both the north and south poles of Mars
have permanent polar caps.
The larger northern cap is made
primarily of water while the southern
cap also contains a large percentage of
carbon dioxide (dry ice).
The permanent polar cap is made of ice
and dirt and is about 1000km across.
During winter the polar caps grow as
thin layers of dry ice form about the
permanent cap.
The polar regions of Mars are covered
by thick layers of sediments deposited
as windblown dust from other parts of
Mars.
Atmosphere of Mars
The atmosphere of Mars consists
primarily of carbon dioxide.
Martian weather is very monotonous;
each day is nearly the same as the
previous one because Mars has little
water vapor and no surface water,
factors responsible for much of the
weather that occurs on the Earth.
The major atmospheric events on Mars
are great dust storms that fill the
atmosphere with dust for weeks at a
time during southern summer.
Water on Mars
Little water (in solid, liquid, or gaseous
form) can be found on Mars today.
However, surface features such as its
channels show that Mars once had much
more water than we have been able to
measure.
It is likely that most of Marss water is
trapped as permanently frozen,
subsurface ice.
Life on Mars
The Viking biology experiments showed
that the Martian soil is chemically
active, but probably does not harbor life.

Meteorites from Mars

Debris from some Martian impact
craters was blasted into space and
eventually reached the Earth.
About two dozen meteorites, known as
the SNC meteorites, show some
remarkable properties.
The SNC meteorites contain inert gases
similar in composition to the inert gases
in the Martian atmosphere as measured
by Viking.