Mars

Mars
Base Data
Radius	169.5 km
Gravity	3.61m/s2
Timewarp Height	15 km
Color	HEX: #b36b4d RGB(179,107,77)
Atmospheric Data
Atmospheric height	20 km
Atmospheric density	0.0008 (0.16 bar)
Curve	9
Upper atmosphere	3 km
Orbit Data
Eccentricity	0.1°
Argument of periapsis	286°

Mars is the 4th planet from the Sun. It is half the size of Earth, making it the second-smallest planet in the solar system, and has 2 small moons — Phobos and Deimos. It has a thin atmosphere that is around 6.25 times as thin as Earth's, which is useful for Martian atmospheric activities.

Mars is often one of the first places a player goes after the Moon. It is also good for practicing landings on celestial bodies with atmospheres and other maneuvers such as aerobraking, and practicing docking on its moons. Most players choose to land a rover on Mars first.

Surface

A guide to landing on Mars can be found here: Getting to Mars

The surface of Mars is covered in smooth, red rolling hills and some craters and is spotted with the occasional mountain structure. Its highest point is Olympus Mons at almost 4 kilometers. This makes Mars an ideal location for driving rovers, doing research and building Martian bases to colonize it.

Martian surface

Be careful when landing on steep slopes, as rockets with a high center of mass or thin bases are prone to tipping over.

Landmarks

There are several landmarks on Mars.

Olympus Mons

Olympus Mons in physics view

Olympus Mons is a volcano on Mars that extends up to 3.9 kilometers into the Martian atmosphere, making it the planet's highest peak. It was added in the 1.4 update.

Olympus Mons is a good location to avoid the effects of Mars’s atmosphere. Although parachutes can be deployed at 2500 meters above the surface of the volcano, they don't sufficiently slow down descending rockets to a safe landing velocity. It can also be used for challenges such as scaling the structure using an airplane or ground vehicle.

Valles Marineris in physics view

Valles Marineris

Valles Marineris is a deep valley on Mars near the equator of the planet. For comparison, the valley is 3 times as deep as the Grand Canyon and its size can stretch across the United States.

Valles Marineris in map view

Rockets can safely land in the center or on the rim of the crater with little no no issue, however, attempting to land on either wall is unadvised due to the steep slope.

Hellas Planitia

Hellas Planitia is a basin on Mars which contains the planet's deepest point at 8.5 kilometers below mean elevation. Surrounding this basin are a few craters that are small in size. They get deeper the closer they are to the sides.

This may be a prime landing spot on Mars, as its low elevation gives more atmospheric drag for parachutes allowing a rocket to be slowed down more than if landing around sea level.

Gale Crater

Gale is a crater on Mars with a mountain in the center of it. It is related to the real life mountain Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp.

The Curiosity rover landed in this crater in search for the ingredients of life and to investigate rocks on Mars.

Jezero

Jezero is a crater on Mars. It is currently explored by the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter. It might have contained water in the past.

Utopia Planitia

Utopia Planitia is a circular plain on Mars which is relatively flat with a few craters. The Viking 2 lander landed on this site inside a crater called Mie.

Arcadia Planitia

Arcadia Planitia is a plain on Mars situated at the northwestern side of the Tharsis region. Its southern side is filled with some deep craters.

Atmosphere

Martian atmosphere

Mars has a thin, reddish atmosphere that reaches 20 kilometers above its surface. It's only 0.16 times as dense as Earth's which is both a blessing and a curse for missions involving the red planet.

Mars' atmosphere has the lowest curve, the coefficient of how fast the atmosphere fades, of all the celestial bodies in the game measuring at 8. This is a quarter less than that of Earth's at 10.

The atmospheric pressure of Mars at different altitudes

Mars's atmosphere is half as dense at roughly 1200 meters off its surface. Mars' scale height is around 2400 meters. Above 12 kilometers above surface elevation the atmosphere can only be slightly felt and be used to aerobrake above that height.

Moons

Two moons orbit Mars: Phobos and Deimos. They are irregular and orbit extremely close to Mars — closer than any other moon in the solar system around its host planet. Both are small and have very weak gravity.

A player can practice docking of spacecraft on the moons due to their small size. Many players recreate sample retrieval missions on the Martian moons.

Phobos

Phobos is the larger, inner moon of Mars. It orbits once every 8 hours around the planet and is porous. Its color appears reddish to pinkish.

Deimos

Deimos is the smaller, outer moon of Mars being only half as big as Phobos. It is yellowish in color featuring a smooth terrain.

Missions to Mars

The red planet is often the second celestial body players explore after the Earth's moon, and provides valuable experience for even more complicated missions in the future.

Landing

Mars’ atmosphere allows the use of parachutes which can be used to slow down the rocket, but oftentimes not enough to prevent damage upon landing. Parachutes can be deployed as early as 4.5 kilometers above ground and help decelerate the spacecraft to a safe landing speed in conjunction with landing legs to brace the impact. For heavy rockets the use of retrothrusters is advised however. The relatively thin atmosphere doesn't heat up incoming rockets substantually to cause concern for most missions.

Takeoff

Due to its small mass and thin atmosphere, leaving Mars is straight-forward and requires 442 m/s delta-v - about 200 m/s less than escaping Earth's gravitational pull. Normal-sized boosters are recommended for leaving Mars. When planning a return mission to Mars, keep in mind that your rocket will be substantially lighter by the time it reaches Mars than it was on Earth.

Gravity Assist

Mars can be used as a gravity assits accelerating the journey to Jupiter or potentially the asteroid belt. They are of limited use however, since Mars' gravity is only 38% of that of Earth.

Note that Mars can rarely be a hindrance when attempting to transfer to Jupiter directly, as it can get in the way of the spacecraft's trajectory.

Achievements

There are four achievements that can be obtained on on Mars:

1. Captured into low Mars orbit
2. Entered Mars's upper atmosphere
3. Reentered Mars's atmosphere, max temperature %temperature%
4. Landed on the surface of Mars

Gallery

A small rocket that recently landed on Mars.

A large rocket using solar panels for stability and parachutes to slow its descent.

A probe in Mars’s upper atmosphere during its descent. It's using 3 parachutes to slow down its descent to the Red Planet.

Mars Rover SFS 1.35 EarthMoonExplorer

Special Orbits

• Areostationary orbit: 851.6 km
• Areosynchronous orbit: 850 km
• Mars has less gravity than the real planet at 3.721 m/s² compared to the 3.61 in-game.

Trivia

• In the early updates Mars was among the first planets added.
• The sheer height of the mountain Olympus Mons means it is a hazard to rockets that land only using parachutes, as the atmosphere is very thin when it lands on the structure.
• Mars is one of three celestial bodies with a cloudless atmosphere, the other two are Europa and the Sun.
  • In real life, Mars has thin clouds made out of water and carbon dioxide.
• Mars might have been habitable once. Because its core cooled down, the magnetic field disappeared and the solar winds stripped off of its atmosphere and it cooled down, causing water to freeze into ice, resulting into a barren Mars today. In the future, Mars might be terraformed, making Mars habitable again.
• Mars is also called the Red Planet because of its reddish surface.
  • The red color of Mars comes from iron oxide or rust.
• Mars is explored by many spacecraft and rovers, like the Perseverance rover, which landed on Jezero crater on February 18, 2021 and the Ingenuity helicopter, which is the first aircraft that flew on another planet.
• Exploring Mars is hard. The reason why it is hard is because of possible mistakes such as computer glitches, delays, cancelled missions, and the most common thing is failures. This is the so called "Mars Curse".
  • Only 54 missions were successful on the Red Planet.
• Landing on Mars is the most difficult: first a spacecraft can lose communication with mission control, second is how fast the spacecraft is going, and third is calculations.
  • NASA dubbed it "EDL" meaning Entry, Descent, and Landing.
  • The first spacecraft to land on Mars is Mars 3 which lost communications after landing.
• A launch window to Mars can take 26 months to occur; the coast to Mars can take on average of 8 months.
• Currently, there is a bug in which rockets landed at any landmark will randomly disappear. The failure message reads as “Crashed into another rocket”.

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