| MARS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Red Planet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mars is one of the most fascinating planets in our solar system. It has been the most observed planet by professional and amateur astronomers alike since the mid-nineteenth century. Through telescopes and actual missions to the planet's surface, astronomers and geologists have found out much more about this planet than they ever thought they would. Today Mars is seen as a once active, thriving planet that has turned into a dead, lunar-like world. Since 1964, NASA has been learning more and more about this planet every day. The planet that is now a lot like our moon they figure was once much more like our own planet. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mariner 4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mariner 4 was the first successful mission to the red planet. It carried a variety of experiments to study the magnetic fields of the inner solar system. The probe's magnetometer recorded for the first time that Mars had a weak magnetic field whose strength was only 0.03% of that of Earth's. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mariner 9 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| When Mariner 9 was launched in 1971, it's main objective for its mission was a systematic mapping of 70% of the planet's surface. The first discovery of the space probe was the huge volcanoes in the Tharsis region of the planet. The largest is Olympus Mons, about 624 km across and 16 miles high. The second discovery was that of the Valles Marineris, a huge canyon system lying along the Martian equator, about 2,500 miles long and 4 miles deep.
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