This planet should be a familiar sight for anyone. The red planet, AKA Mars is a massive focus of astronomers and astrobiologists alike as it lies in our sun’s habitable region and there is strong evidence that is once contained flowing water and was very like earth. This also implies a very strong possibility of there having been life on mars at some point or another.
Because of this everyone on Earth is raving over mars with a rover (that has its own twitter page https://twitter.com/marscuriosity ) currently rolling around looking for life and taking selfies and another mission planned for next year to send an european rover to mars. However despite all of these successes only 18 of the 40 missions to Mars have actually been successful.
Something lesser known however is that there are bits of Mars right here on earth. Due to violent collisions with Mars, meteorites have ejected rocks off the planet into space which have traveled for a very long time before crashing into our very own little lump of space rock. This means that scientists could study mars before they even got there in the first place!.
This red lump of rock has the largest dust storms in the universe (which is saying something considering half of our planets are basically made of dust) and its reddish tinge is given by iron rich minerals on its rocky surface.
We may well never know if life inhabited Mars all those millions of years ago, but there almost definitely will be soon, with NASA planning to spend volunteers to live on mars around the year 2030. This planet may be past its glory days, but that doesn’t mean its rusty surface is any less remarkable.
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