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Mars

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Encyclopedia of Astrobiology

Definition

Mars is the fourth Planet from the Sun and one of the terrestrial planets. It is named after the Roman god of war.

Overview

Mars accreted rapidly in a couple of million years (Brasser 2013) and differentiated within a few tens of millions years after the formation of the Solar System into a core, mantle, and crust, as indicated by isotope geochemistry (Lee and Halliday 1997; Mezger et al. 2013). It is commonly thought that the bulk composition of Mars is “chondritic” (Dreibus and Wänke 1985), i.e., similar to the composition of Carbonaceous Chondrites, the most primitive materials in the Solar System. The Fe-Ni-FeS core is dense and metal rich (Fig. 1) and its radius is about 50 % of the surface radius, the exact value depending on its content of lighter elements like sulfur. The remnant magnetization of parts of the Martian crust indicates that core convection induced by energy from core cooling and/or inner core growth might have produced a core magnetic dynamo and a...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, UMR 8539, Université Paris 6, BP 99, 4 place Jussieu, 75252, Paris, France

    François Forget

  2. Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) e.V., Institut für Planetenforschung, Rutherfordstrasse 2, 12489, Berlin, Germany

    Ernst Hauber

Authors
  1. François Forget
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  2. Ernst Hauber
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to François Forget .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS-Universite de Bordeaux, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Floirac, France

    Muriel Gargaud

  2. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    William M. Irvine

  3. Departamento de Biologia Molecular, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Ricardo Amils

  4. Earth–Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro–ku, Tokyo, Japan

    Henderson James (Jim) Cleaves II

  5. GEOTOP Research Center for Geochemistry and Geodynamics, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Daniele L. Pinti

  6. Department of Astrophysics, Laboratory of Molecular Astrophysics, Iorrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain

    José Cernicharo Quintanilla

  7. LESIA, Observatoire Paris-Site de Meudon, Meudon, France

    Daniel Rouan

  8. Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut für Planetenforschung, Berlin, Germany

    Tilman Spohn

  9. Centre François Viéte d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques EA 1161, Faculté des Sciences et des, Techniques de Nantes, Nantes, France

    Stéphane Tirard

  10. CNES/DSP/SME, Vétérinaire/DVM, Astro/Exobiology, Paris Cedex 1, France

    Michel Viso

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Forget, F., Hauber, E. (2015). Mars. In: Gargaud, M., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44185-5_938

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