Mars
6,779 kmacross
Mars is 6,779 km across (1.9× narrower than Earth) and orbits the Sun at 1.52 AU — about 227,388,762 km. Sunlight takes 13 minutes to reach it. A cold desert with seasons, polar ice and dry riverbeds — once warmer and wetter than it is today.
▶ Visit Mars in 3D
What kind of world is it?
Mars is the most explored planet beyond Earth, and the most Earth-like in rhythm: its day is only 39 minutes longer than ours and it has seasons, ice caps and weather. But its air is less than 1% as thick as Earth’s and mostly CO₂. Billions of years ago rivers ran here — the dry valleys and lake beds our rovers drive through are the evidence.
Olympus Mons rises ~22 km — about 2.5× Everest — on a planet half Earth’s width with a third of its gravity.
Mars by the numbers
Diameter
6,779 km
Distance from the Sun
1.52 AU
Sunlight travel time
13 minutes
Surface gravity
3.7 m/s²
Temperature
−63 °C average
A day lasts
24.6 hours
A year lasts
687 Earth days
Known moons
2
Notable moons
Mars has 2 known moons. The ones worth meeting:
Numbers only get you so far. The distances are the part nobody's brain handles — in the interactive view, switch to 1:1 scale and watch Mars shrink to an honest speck on an enormous empty orbit.
Keep going
✓ Facts verified July 2026
Every figure on this page is a real, rounded value checked against primary sources. Found something out of date? See how we keep it accurate.