Mars is a planet with about 1/3 the surface of the earth. So it has about the same amount of land as earth has dry land. Mars has a gravity of 0.38g, earth has 1g. At 0.38g human beings probably live with no side effect like bone shrinking. Plants don't need any gravity and therefore feel perfectly comfortable at such a gravity. Mars' day, unlike all other planets' day, is comparable in length with earths' day. At the equator, the day is 24.5 hours long, on earth, the day is About 24 hours long. This is no problem for agriculture; the day-night rhythm is neither too short nor too long. This is one of Mars' big advantages compared with the moon.  

Mars is also called the red planet because of its colour (which is red). The Martian soil (or Martian "regolith") has big amounts of rust (Fe₂O₃), which gives it the red colour. The abundance of rust is an advantage for future colonies which, if they desire to be independent from Earth and able to grow quickly, will need vast amounts of iron in form of steel. The iron can be gained easily from the rust in the martian soil.  

Future farmers in martian greenhouses will be glad to hear that the martian soil is very good for agriculture because of the higher concentrations of phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, iron, manganese, zinc and copper. 

People who think that the water needed for a colony on Mars would have to be imported from Earth are absolutely wrong. The martian soil on the 10 upper centimetres ( the driest sheet ) contains at least 3% of water. This is enough to get water out of the soil by heating it up. The martian northern icecap is mostly made out of water ice which can be heated up to get liquid water. If Mars was flat and if all the water ice was molten, the planet would probably be covered with a 100m deep ocean. That means that water deposits underground are likely to be found. Those water sources will represent a gold source for future Mars-colonists.  

The martian atmosphere is only 7mbars thick, which is not very much compared to Earths' 1000mbar atmosphere. But this atmosphere is thick enough to prevent the deadly solar storms from reaching the surface of the planet. Because Mars' gravity is about 1/3 as strong as Earth's, the 7mbar atmosphere would be a 21mbar atmosphere on Earth. The atmosphere is mainly ( to 95% ) made of carbon dioxide ( CO₂). The rest is oxygen ( O₂ ), nitrogen ( N₂), water vapour ( H₂O ) and noble gases ( He, Ne, Ar...). 

But Mars also has a very interesting geology which has a lot of touristical value. It has the largest canyon system in the solar system ( Valles Marineris) and also the by far highest and largest volcano in the solar system ( Olympus Mons which is 26 km high ). It also has beautiful and enormous craters, which do not exist on Earth. Interesting to know is that the northern hemisphere is much lower that the southern hemisphere. This could have been provoked by an enormous meteorite impact. Mars also has two small asteroid-like moons that can be seen from the surface. Mars is the most beautiful planet in the solar system.  

What is most interesting about Mars is that it is possible to terraform it with today's technologies and a modest budget. It is the only planet we know of where this is possible. We'll tell you more about terraforming our sister planet a little further on this site.  
 
  

Here is a short table where characteristics of Mars and Earth are compared. 
 
 

                                     Mars                                     Earth

Equatorial diameter	6, 787 km	12, 756 km
Polar diameter	6, 746 km	12, 714 km
Duration of 1 rotation	24, 62 hours	23, 94 hours
Mass (Earth=1)	0, 107	1, 00
Average density (water=1)	3, 94	5, 52
Acceleration due to gravity (at surface)	3, 7 m/s/s	9, 8 m/s/s
Escape velocity	5, 01 km/s	11, 20 km/s
Inclination of axis	23,98 '	23, 4 '
Maximum temperature	27 'C	58 'C
Minimum temperature	- 126 'C	- 88, 3 'C
Natural Satellites	2	1
Position in Solar System	4	3
Composition of atmosphere	~99% CO2, 1% Ar, Kr, O2, H2O, N2 etc...	~80% N2, 20% O2, some CO2, H2O, Ar etc...
Density of atmosphere	~7-8 mbars	~1013 mbars at sealevel