Already in the near future, a person will first step on the surface of another planet. This will be Mars. And already now candidates for such a trip have a question: how will their home from afar look like?
Instructions
Step 1
Missionaries to Mars may not always be able to see Earth in its night sky. After all, the distance to the Earth sometimes exceeds the distance to the Sun. The Martian year is 687 Earth days. This means that Mars will be on the other side of the Sun for a quarter of this time. The Earth can be observed only during periods of great opposition, when both the Earth and Mars will be on the same side of the Sun. It makes sense: if Mars can be observed from the Earth, then the Earth can also be observed from the surface of Mars.
Step 2
For the first time, people saw images of the Earth from the orbit of another planet, sent by a spacecraft of the "Mariner" series. A few years later, the automatic apparatus Spirit, delivered to the surface of the red planet, on March 8, 2004 for the first time transmitted images of the Earth from the surface of Mars. On them, the Earth differs significantly from images from orbital stations. A distant, barely distinguishable gray-blue disc in the night sky. In terms of luminosity, the Earth is the second after Jupiter. Venus is the third, and Mercury is not visible at all in the scattered rays of the Sun.
Step 3
Communication with the Earth was delayed by 20 minutes. This is how much time it takes for the signal to reach the antennas of the device and return back. Due to this amendment, the rover operators had to face some difficulties in control. Very often there was a danger of a mission failure. But over time, scientists acquired skills and successfully received a lot of valuable information.
Step 4
The sky from the surface of Mars is yellow-orange, not because the atmosphere scatters red rays more strongly, but because there is a lot of dust in it. Sometimes dust storms cover the entire planet reaching 100 m / s and last for many months. In 2005, a dust whirlwind ripped solar panels off the Spirit rover. Naturally, in such weather, neither the stars nor the Earth are visible. During sunrise and sunset, the Martian sky at its zenith is orange-pink, and closer to the Sun - from yellow-blue to purple. It is exactly the opposite to the earthly pictures of sunrise and sunset.
Step 5
Now it is important for scientists that Mars is an important planet from the point of view of colonization. Even the most primitive forms of life may be found on it. After all, it is already reliably known that about three billion years ago, Mars had a warm atmosphere and water, which is the source of the origin of life. A meteorite found in Antarctica is a piece of Martian rock thrown out by the explosion of a fallen asteroid and contains fossilized traces of living organisms.
