For one, Mars is on average about 50 percent farther from the sun than Earth is, with an average orbital distance of 142 million miles. At two specific moments each year-called the equinoxes-both hemispheres receive equal illumination.īut for several reasons, seasons on Mars are different from those on Earth. Whichever hemisphere is tilted closer to the sun experiences spring and summer, while the hemisphere tilted away gets fall and winter. Mars’s axis of rotation is tilted 25.2 degrees relative to the plane of the planet’s orbit around the sun, which helps give Mars seasons similar to those on Earth.
Mars rotates on its axis every 24.6 Earth hours, defining the length of a Martian day, which is called a sol (short for “solar day”). This video explains what makes it so different from Earth and what would happen if humans lived there. Recent NASA exploratory expeditions revealed some of the red planet's biggest mysteries.
