Description
Watch science academy using Real World Mars globe
THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System) orbiting the red planet.
FYI: See plentiful THEMIS educational info at Arizona State Univ. https://themis.asu.edu/
For 20 years, the American astronomer Percival Lowell had one abiding passion–the planet Mars. He studied it as no other earthling ever had, and although he has been dead for nearly a half century, much of our present knowledge of the “red planet” comes from his findings. His observations formed the basis for his books: Mars, then Mars and Its Canals, Mars as the Abode of Life, The Evolution of Worlds, The Solar System, and The Genesis of the Planet. “Conditions may exist there under which our wildest fancies may be commonplace facts,” he wrote.
The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) is an instrument on board the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. It combines a 5-wavelength visual imaging system with a 9-wavelength infrared imaging system. Mars Odyssey launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 7, 2001 and arrived at Mars on October 24, 2001. It spent the next several months achieving a circular mapping orbit by aerobraking (dipping into the atmosphere to slow and shrink the orbit). Aerobraking concluded in early February 2002, and primary mapping operations began a few weeks later. The spacecraft is in a 2-hour orbit around Mars. As of 2015, it had completed 60,000 orbits of the planet Mars.
Mars Arsia Mons Lesson Activity
By William Robertson
Dynamo theory: Circulating convection currents of liquid metal in Earth’s outer core is thought to be the source of Earth’s magnetic field. This magnetic field surrounds the Earth (the magnetosphere) and deflects the incoming charged particles of the solar wind around the Earth. By deflecting these high-energy charged particles, the magnetosphere shields the Earth (and its atmosphere) from being stripped away by the momentum of these particles.
For reasons not completely understood, Mars lost its magnetic field billions of years ago. The current primary hypothesis is that Mars’ core cooled and solidified (core crystallization). Without a liquid metal outer core to support convection currents, the dynamo effect was lost, and the magnetic field ceased – leaving Mars’ atmosphere vulnerable to the onslaught of the solar wind.
Albedo (greyscale) map of Mars 1997 by Carlos E. Hernandez and Daniel M. Troiani based upon Dan Troiani’s 1995 map of Mars from A.L.P.O. observations.
Hydrology of Mars – Study and images
Loading of the lithosphere of Mars by the Tharsis mountainous rise explains much of the global shape and long-wavelength gravity field of the planet, including a ring of negative gravity anomalies and a topographic trough around Tharsis
