Atmosphere
Thin, mostly carbon dioxide with nitrogen and argon.
Acquiring mission data
Apex AndromedaApex AndromedaAcquiring mission data
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Planet 04 · Terrestrial desert planet
A rusted world with the evidence of water still carved into it.
Mars is a cold desert today, but its valleys, deltas, lakebeds, and water-formed minerals record a much wetter past. Orbiters, landers, rovers, and one very stubborn helicopter have turned it into the most intensely explored planet beyond Earth.
World profile
Thin, mostly carbon dioxide with nitrogen and argon.
Basaltic rock and iron-rich dust, giant volcanoes, deep canyons, polar ice, and ancient water channels.
Average about −85 °F (−65 °C)
Two — Phobos and Deimos
Composition
Field notes
Mars looks red because iron minerals in its dust oxidized — it rusted.
Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system and Valles Marineris dwarfs Earth's great canyons.
Water now survives mainly as ice, hydrated minerals, and possible seasonal brines because the air is too thin for stable surface lakes.
Sourced image archive
Every image keeps its credit, capture date, description, and original source. Mission imagery links back into the same Andromeda mission catalog.
Mission imagery
An orthographic global mosaic assembled from about 1,000 Viking Orbiter red- and violet-filter images, with nearly complete planetary coverage.
Connected mission archive
Flybys, orbiters, landers, atmospheric probes, rovers, launch missions, gravity assists, and system satellites are linked here when they exist in the Andromeda catalog.
Open mission browser →69 linked missions · showing 49–69
Primary facts source
NASA Science · Mars facts ↗
Mars · Launch payload
A TBD TBD rocket will launch the ExoMars Rover (Rosalind Franklin) mission. The launch date is currently targeted for 2028 (UTC).
Mars · Launch payload
NASA's Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) Freedom is a proposed nuclear-electric propelled spacecraft scheduled to launch to Mars.
Associations use destination records plus a curated cross-world manifest for flybys and gravity assists. Mission-name collisions such as Project Mercury and Saturn launch vehicles are deliberately kept with Earth unless they actually visited the planet. Technically obvious; historically necessary.
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