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The planet Mars is these days the brightest and largest that will ever exist until 2035. The neighboring planet will be in “opposition” on the night of Tuesday, October 13, that is, right in front of the Sun, with the Earth aligned on the same side. . between Mars and our parent star.
The “contrast” marks the time when Mars appears brightest. The orbits of Earth and Mars brought the two planets closer together on October 6, at a distance of only 62.07 million kilometers. Mars and Earth won’t be that close again until 2035.
The record for the last 60,000 years was the distance of only 56 million km in 2003, while even in contrast the distance between Earth and Mars can be quite large, such as more than 100 million km in 2012 when both planets have elliptical orbits).
Mars is in opposition every 26 months, but this year’s opposition is special, because it occurs only a few days after the “red” planet got very close to Earth, before gradually the orbits of the two planets move apart each one more time.
The misleading information that circulated on the Internet that “Mars will appear in the sky as big as the full moon” is not true. Mars will appear to the naked eye as a bright star, to the southeast in the sky.
Space services often take advantage of the approach of the two planets during the opposition period of Mars, a few months before or after, to launch a spacecraft at that time, so that it takes less time to reach the neighboring planet. Already the “missions” to Mars have put up three missions launched in the summer: Hope from the United Arab Emirates, Tianwen from China and Mars 2020 / Perseverance from the US. All three missions, the last two of which include a robotic rover to explore the surface, arrive on Mars in February 2021.
The Euro-Russian ExoMars / Rosalind Franklin mission, which will also send a rover, missed this year’s “window of opportunity” and will now wait until the end of 2022 for launch.
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