Mars

Befitting the Red Planet's bloody color, the Romans named it after their god of war. In
truth, the Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who also named the planet after their god
of war, Ares. 

Other civilizations also typically gave the planet names based on its color — for
example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one," while ancient
Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the fire star."

The red planet Mars, named for the Roman god of war, has long been an omen in the
night sky. And in its own way, the planet’s rusty red surface tells a story of destruction.
Billions of years ago, the fourth planet from the sun could have been mistaken for
Earth’s smaller twin, with liquid water on its surface—and maybe even life.

Now, the world is a cold, barren desert with few signs of liquid water. But after decades
of study using orbiters, landers, and rovers, scientists have revealed Mars as a
dynamic, windblown landscape that could—just maybe—harbor microbial life beneath
its rusty surface even today.

The planet's cold, thin atmosphere means liquid water likely cannot exist on the Martian
surface for any appreciable length of time. Features called recurring slope lineae may
have spurts of briny water flowing on the surface, but this evidence is disputed; some
scientists argue the hydrogen spotted from orbit in this region may instead indicate briny
salts. This means that although this desert planet is just half the diameter of Earth, it
has the same amount of dry land.

The Red Planet is home to both the highest mountain and the deepest, longest valley in
the solar system. Olympus Mons is roughly 17 miles (27 kilometers) high, about three
times as tall as Mount Everest, while the Valles Marineris system of valleys — named
after the Mariner 9 probe that discovered it in 1971 — reaches as deep as 6 miles (10
km) and runs east-west for roughly 2,500 miles (4,000 km), about one-fifth of the
distance around Mars and close to the width of Australia.

Scientists think the Valles Marineris formed mostly by rifting of the crust as it got
stretched. Individual canyons within the system are as much as 60 miles (100 km) wide.
The canyons merge in the central part of the Valles Marineris in a region as much as
370 miles (600 km) wide. Large channels emerging from the ends of some canyons and
layered sediments within suggest that the canyons might once have been filled with
liquid water.

Mars also has the largest volcanoes in the solar system, Olympus Mons being one of
them. The massive volcano, which is about 370 miles (600 km) in diameter, is wide
enough to cover the state of New Mexico. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with
slopes that rise gradually like those of Hawaiian volcanoes, and was created by
eruptions of lava that flowed for long distances before solidifying.