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Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million km) (12.673 light minutes), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. [1] [2] The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days [3] and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, [4] making the average orbital speed 24 km/s. The eccentricity is greater than that of every other planet except Mercury ...
Mars usually appears distinctly yellow, orange, or red. When farthest away from Earth, it is more than seven times farther away than when it is closest. Mars is usually close enough for particularly good viewing once or twice at 15-year or 17-year intervals. [194] Optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about ...
Sun–Earth L 4. L 4 is the Sun–Earth Lagrange point located close to the Earth's orbit 60° ahead of Earth. Asteroid (706765) 2010 TK 7 is the first discovered tadpole orbit companion to Earth, orbiting L 4; like Earth, its mean distance to the Sun is about one astronomical unit. Asteroid (614689) 2020 XL 5 is the second Earth trojan ...
Kármán line. Earth's atmosphere photographed from the International Space Station. The orange and green line of airglow is at roughly the altitude of the Kármán line. [ 1] The Kármán line (or von Kármán line / vɒn ˈkɑːrmɑːn /) [ 2] is a conventional definition of the edge of space. It is not universally accepted.
It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 163.3 AU (24.4 billion km; 15.2 billion mi) from Earth as of July 2024, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth.
The history of Mars observation is about the recorded history of observation of the planet Mars. Some of the early records of Mars' observation date back to the era of the ancient Egyptian astronomers in the 2nd millennium BCE. Chinese records about the motions of Mars appeared before the founding of the Zhou dynasty (1045 BCE).
The nearest star is 4.2 light-years away, and at 15.341 km/s, the spacecraft travels one light-year in about 19,541 years - during which time the nearby stars will also move substantially. In roughly 42,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass the star Ross 248 (10.30 light-years away from Earth) at a distance of 1.7 light-years. [109]
Earth's orbit. Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 149.60 million km (92.96 million mi), or 8.317 light-minutes, [ 1] in a counterclockwise direction as viewed from above the Northern Hemisphere. One complete orbit takes 365.256 days (1 sidereal year ), during which time Earth has traveled 940 million km (584 million mi). [ 2]