Together we are going to leave Earth on a one-way trip to a new world.

The launch window is open.

Our rocket is fueled and “all systems are go.”

So get ready as we go on a Mission to Mars.

You may be wondering why we are going to Mars instead of Venus.

After all, Venus is the closest planet to Earth, and it’s roughly the same size as Earth.

Sounds promising, right?

Well, there are a few problems with Venus.

Its surface temperature is over 450 degrees Celsius.

And the air pressure on the surface would quickly crush us.

Then there’s the little matter of clouds of sulfuric acid...

Mars by comparison is much more hospitable.

Sure we’ll weigh a little less, and the air is unbreathable, but

we can survive these challenges.

Now, you’d better get comfortable because this trip will take awhile!

We’re on our way!

We timed our trip to Mars for when it would be closest to the Earth.

Remember, planets travel in elliptical orbits, so they’re not always at the same distance

from the Sun, or each other.

Mars has one of the most eccentric (or least circular) orbits - only Mercury is more eccentric.

Mars makes a “close approach” to the Earth approximately every 26 months.

But sometimes it gets even closer.

We say Mars is "at opposition" when it lines up with Earth on the same side of the Sun.

We get the name from the view on Earth, with Mars and the Sun on “opposite” sides of our sky.

When Mars is at its very closest point to the Earth, we call it a “favourable opposition.”

At this point, the distance between the two planets is only about 56 million kilometers.

We didn’t have too long to wait for a favourable opposition - this configuration happens about

every 15 years.

Keep in mind, we didn’t point our rocket right AT Mars when we took off.

Instead, we aimed for where Mars was going to be when we arrived.

The whole trip takes months.

If we went at the wrong time, the trip would take much longer, and we’d need a lot more fuel.

We’re getting close to Mars!

Let’s take a look!

It looks red, doesn’t it?

That’s kind of an optical illusion.

The surface of Mars is a mix of colours including brown, tan, butterscotch...and the planet

is covered by reddish-brown dust from a variety of iron compounds.

That rusty-coloured dust gets kicked up into the Martian atmosphere, and when it’s lit

up by the sun and surrounded by the blackness of space, it looks red to our eyes.

Many early cultures named Mars based on its colour - the Egyptian priests were the first

to write about Mars around 2000 BC, calling it “Horus The Red.”

Ancient Chinese astronomers called it “The Fire Star.”

The Greeks saw red and thought of blood, and named it after their God of War, Ares.

The Romans followed suit, and called it Mars, after their own God of War.

Let’s get a closer look at those reddish rocks.

If we turn on our spectroscope, we can see that the planet’s surface is

mostly made up of the minerals feldspar, olivine, and pyroxene.

Those minerals are found on Earth in solidified lava.

That means we should expect to see volcanoes.

We can start to make out the very thin atmosphere of Mars.

See that narrow ring?

The air is SO thin, we’re going to experience very low pressure.

And we won’t be able to breathe the air on Mars.

It’s about 96% carbon dioxide, and a little bit of other gases.

As we begin our descent through the atmosphere, we see a few wispy clouds.

These ice clouds are made of frozen carbon dioxide - or “dry ice.”

As we continue to descend, we move through that dust layer.

Finally, we come across some water ice clouds.

You knew there was water on Mars, right?

This thin atmosphere isn’t going to provide much thermal insulation.

We can expect big temperature swings on the planet’s surface, from as high as 20 degrees

Celsius during the day, to negative 140 degrees Celsius at night.

We’ll definitely need a shelter.

Okay, everyone.

Brace for landing.

Home sweet home!

We had to quickly set up a habitat that provides us with air,

constant pressure, food, and water.

The air pressure outside on Mars is only around 1% of the atmospheric pressure we find

at sea level on Earth.

We’d have to travel well above the surface of the Earth, into the Stratosphere,

before we felt so little air pressure.

You’ll notice I’m wearing a weighted suit, because Mars surface gravity is only

37% of the Earth’s.

That means without the suit, I could jump a lot higher on Mars.

This suit makes walking around feel a little more normal.

Of course, when I go outside, I’ll need to change into a pressurized suit,

with a helmet.

I’m going to have to take some air to breathe along with me.

Now, time for a good square meal before we go out to explore.

We’ve landed in the Northern Hemisphere, which is relatively smooth compared to the

heavily cratered South.

Will you look at that!

We have ourselves a mountain view!

That’s not just any mountain.

That’s Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System.

It stands 25 kilometers high.

That’s about 3 times taller than Mount Everest.

Olympus Mons is what we call a “shield volcano.”

Rather than erupting violently, this kind of volcano gets built up

by lava flowing down the sides.

Shield volcanoes, like the ones in the Hawaiian islands, were named for their resemblance

to a soldier’s shield lying on its side.

Olympus Mons isn’t the only big volcano on Mars.

Around 1200 km away, there are three other giant volcanoes,

together called the Tharsis Montes.

Mars is also home to one of the largest canyons

in the solar system, Valles Marineris.

It’s about 4,000 km long, 200 km wide, and almost 7 km deep.

That’s unimaginably big.

Picture a canyon that stretches almost all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast

of the United States.

The depth of Valles Marineris allows us to make some estimates about the thickness of

Mars’s crust - it must be significantly thicker than the Earth’s crust to allow

for such a deep gorge, as thick as 35 km in the northern hemisphere, and even thicker

in the southern hemisphere (we call that a “crustal dichotomy”).

Before we go anywhere, we’re going to have to plan our sightseeing trip carefully.

After all, compasses don’t work on Mars.

That’s because unlike the Earth, Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field.

We’re going to use Olympus Mons as a landmark, and head out from there.

Maybe we can take a boat ride down those famous Martian canals!

I’m just kidding.

Years ago, people used to think there were canals filled with water on Mars.

It turns out it was more a miscommunication than anything...

In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli described the straight lines he saw

crisscrossing Mars.

He called them “canali,” which means “channels” in Italian.

English speakers misinterpreted the word as “canals,” which implied there were actual

Martians building an irrigation system.

The story quickly spun off into fantasy, with people imagining reasons for Martians transporting

water from the icy poles to the more equatorial regions: the Red Planet was a desert, running

out of resources, and that meant any day Martians were going to show up on Earth and take us over!

The idea of extraterrestrial life on Mars gave rise to timeless works of science fiction

from such greats as Edgar Rice Burroughs, HG Wells, and Ray Bradbury.

We now know there are no signs of engineering on Mars - no canals.

Even the grooves on the planet’s surface that Schiaparelli documented

turned out to be an optical illusion.

But there IS water.

We’ve known about there being frozen water on Mars for a while.

There are polar ice caps, just like on Earth, made of frozen water.

But recently we’ve uncovered good evidence for RUNNING water on Mars.

We’ve captured images of dark streaks in the same areas where we’ve identified

hydrated salts on the spectrometer.

These dark streaks change size with the seasons, suggesting seasonal flows of water.

We should be able to get a good look at these areas today.

We’ll have quite a few hours of daylight for exploring.

A day on Mars is about the same length as a day on Earth.

It takes 24 hours, 37 minutes, and about...23 seconds for the planet to rotate once.

Of all the planets, a Martian day is the closest to an Earth day.

The seasons are another story.

Like the Earth, Mars has an axial tilt.

That is, its axis of rotation is tilted about 25 degrees away from the perpendicular.

Earth’s axial tilt is 23.5 degrees.

This means both planets experience seasons, with opposite seasons

in the northern and southern hemispheres.

However, the Martian seasons are about twice as long as on Earth, because it takes Mars

almost 2 Earth-years to complete its orbit around the sun.

I can’t wait to get a look at that Martian sky - it’s brownish-yellow, because of the

red dust in the atmosphere.

The dust particles contain magnetite, which absorbs blue light, leaving the sky yellow.

We’ll also get to see the two moons orbiting Mars - Phobos and Deimos.

They were discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall.

He named the moons after the sons of Ares, the Greek God of War - Phobos means "fear,"

and Deimos means "rout."

You might mistake these two moons for asteroids - they’re small and irregularly shaped.

There’s some debate about how Mars got its two moons - did it capture a couple of asteroids?

Or are they leftovers from when Mars was first formed?

{{alarm goes off}}

{{ALARM IS RINGING}} Well, spaceballs.

We’re going to have to scratch our little walk today.

There’s a dust storm brewing.

Mars gets massive dust storms, complete with whirlpools called Dust Devils.

Even though the wind exerts much less force here on Mars compared with the Earth, since

the air is so thin - we’re not going to take any chances.

Some of these storms can last for months, and stretch over the entire planet.

Killer dust storms, butterscotch sky, it’s a typical day on Mars.

As you can see, it’s not going to be so easy living here on Mars.

So what will it take to make Mars more hospitable to life?

On Earth, we have a nice thick atmosphere keeping the temperature fairly stable.

The greenhouse effect from gases like carbon dioxide keeps warming our planet,

making it suitable for life.

You might think, with such a high percentage of carbon dioxide in the air on Mars, we could

expect the greenhouse effect here as well.

But the atmosphere is just too thin.

And water vapor, which also helps stabilize Earth’s temperature, is present here

only in trace amounts.

Is there a way to transform this place - to “terraform” it?

Scientists are working out some proposals.

It comes down to 3 key elements: build up an atmosphere, keep it warm enough to sustain life,

and stop the atmosphere from leaking away into space.

One day...One beautiful Martian day…

Thank you for watching!

Special thanks to Ray Bradbury for inspiring us.