Mars will be the closest to the land, it has been in 15 years tonight

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The red planet will be only 57.6 million kilometers from the Earth, the closest since 2003 – the last time the Earth has covered its orbit of the Sun.

This overlap is called Opposition – and it happens every 2.1 years. But as Professor Bedding explains, because the orbit is elliptical, every seven laps (or around 15 years) the Earth rides it to a closer point.

But it's not just Mars that is showing a show for the moment. Venus and Jupiter are also visible and brilliant.

"This is a good opportunity for people to go out and enjoy the sky, especially those of us who often do not, especially if you live in the city where light pollution" This is not an event for which you have to rush, it's not like an eclipse, where if you missed it, it's over, you can go back there all the way night for the next few years. The weeks and March will still be beautiful, Jupiter will still be beautiful, Venus will be beautiful to the west. "

There is something about Mars

The discovery of a 20-kilometer lake under the ice cap on Mars by Mars Express orbiter of the European Space Agency this week has renewed the question not only to know if there is life on Mars, but what could this life look like.

So, here are some facts: Mars is about half the Earth, so the gravity is lower there – only one third of what is on Earth and so you could jump higher, if you could breathe.

The Martian atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and there is very little anyway , the pressure is less than 1% of the air pressure here.The ground temperatures range from 30 degrees Celsius to -123 below.One day there are 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long and a year is 687 days Earth.

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March is red because it's rusty. Martian dust is full of iron oxide.

This is, as would say a tourist brochure, a land of dramatic contrasts, with the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, 24 kilometers high, and the longest canyon, Valles Marineris, 4023 to our knowledge, it is inhabited mainly by our own robots, like the rovers and Vikings we sent there, as well as by the wreckage of the lost landers.

Some 45 space missions – not all who did – were launched to Mars by humans. There are five on the register, including the efforts of China and the United Arab Emirates, scheduled for the summer of 2020.

If anyone d & # 39; Other was interested, whether there is something like a stranger iPhone or any of these monoliths of 2001: A Space Odyssey sitting on a rock somewhere, we would not have found it yet.

From all this exploration a new story emerged, also haunted. It is a planet once splashed by the oceans and sculpted by fast-flowing rivers, a world warmed long ago by an atmosphere.

But something happened and Mars lost its glittering waters and its air

bare shorelines, empty filaments of tributaries, silent rocks and occasional wet spots on the flanks of the cliffs. If there has been life here, the story is happening, it's dead or went into hiding.

with New York Times