The most striking thing about Mars’ appearance – whether seen with the naked eye or through a telescope – is its red color.

Mars

Its surface is rocky, with canyons, volcanoes, dry lake beds and craters all over it. Red dust covers most of its surface. Mars has clouds and wind just like Earth. Tiny dust storms can look like tornados, and large ones can be seen from Earth.

On the dwarf planet Pluto, the reddish color is likely caused by hydrocarbon molecules that are formed when cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light interact with methane in Pluto’s atmosphere and on its surface.

Is Mars really red? When you see Mars in the night sky, it definitely has a reddish tint to it. When rusty dust from those rocks gets kicked up in the atmosphere, it makes the martian sky look pink. From a long way away, the whole planet looks kind of reddish.

In many aspects, Mars is the most Earth-like of all the other planets in the Solar System. It is thought that Mars had a more Earth-like environment early in its geological history, with a thicker atmosphere and abundant water that was lost over the course of hundreds of millions of years through atmospheric escape.

It is the pull of the Moon’s gravity on the Earth that holds our planet in place. Without the Moon stabilising our tilt, it is possible that the Earth’s tilt could vary wildly. It would move from no tilt (which means no seasons) to a large tilt (which means extreme weather and even ice ages).

The atmosphere on Mars is mostly made of carbon dioxide. It is also 100 times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere, so even if it did have a similar composition to the air here, humans would be unable to breathe it to survive.

However, the surface is not hospitable to humans or most known life forms due to the radiation, greatly reduced air pressure, and an atmosphere with only 0.16% oxygen. Human survival on Mars would require living in artificial Mars habitats with complex life-support systems.

Earth

What makes the Earth habitable? It is the right distance from the Sun, it is protected from harmful solar radiation by its magnetic field, it is kept warm by an insulating atmosphere, and it has the right chemical ingredients for life, including water and carbon.

After the Earth, Mars is the most habitable planet in our solar system due to several reasons:

• Its soil contains water to extract.
• It isn’t too cold or too hot.
• There is enough sunlight to use solar panels.
• Gravity on Mars is 38% that of our Earth’s, which is believed by many to be sufficient for the human body to adapt to.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet because it did not meet the three criteria the IAU uses to define a full-sized planet. It contains the asteroid belt as well as the terrestrial planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.