03 · Mars journey
Mars
Seven months out. The first world where no one has stood.
Mars is where a trip becomes a life. A day lasts 24 hours and 40 minutes, the sky is the color of butterscotch, and a message home takes up to twenty-two minutes to arrive. The way back opens only once every twenty-six months.
Fly there in the journeyAt a glance
- Distance from Earth
- 55–401 million km
- Travel time
- About 7 months
- Gravity
- 0.38 g
- A day (sol)
- 24 h 40 min
- Signal delay
- 3–22 min
- Average temperature
- -63 °C
The sunsets are blue.
Fine Martian dust scatters blue light forward, toward the sun. So while the daytime sky glows butterscotch, evening turns a cold, quiet blue around the setting sun — just as NASA’s rovers have photographed it.
Flight plan
- Month 0
The window opens
Earth and Mars line up for an efficient transfer only once every 26 months. Miss it, and you wait two more years.
- Months 1–7
Deep-space cruise
Months of weightlessness, exercise and cosmic radiation. Earth fades into a bright blue star.
- Arrival
Seven minutes of terror
Entry, descent and landing take about seven minutes, all of it automatic. By the time the news reaches Earth, it has often already happened.
- Sols 1–500
Life on the surface
About a year and a half on the surface while the planets realign: habitats, greenhouses, and walks under a butterscotch sky.
- Return
The long way home
Another seven months back. Door to door, the whole journey takes roughly two and a half years.
What you will see
Olympus Mons
The tallest volcano in the solar system, about 22 km high — nearly two and a half times Everest.
Valles Marineris
A canyon system 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep. On Earth it would stretch across a continent.
Two small moons
Phobos crosses the sky twice a day, rising in the west. Slow, distant Deimos looks like a bright star.
Where we are today
No one has been to Mars yet. Our rovers have: Curiosity and Perseverance are still driving across it today, scouting the way.
Fly there in the journey