Mars and its position in the sky at birth are used in astrology to describe the desires and masculine aspects of sex. Mars symbolizes:

In astrological charts, Mars is symbolized as a male figure :

               ___ /
             .'   `.
             |  .  |





Source o' Knowledge: Mars, Incorporated
Four more Mars I know:

A block cipher and AES candidate brought to you by IBM, based in part on the legacy of DES.

A movement from Gustav Holst's orchestral Planets Suite, subtitled Bringer of War. It features a lot of brass and it kicks butt. This is a favorite for large brass group arrangements.

Also, MARS is the virtual computer system that runs Redcode in the classic game Corewars.

Oh, and let's not forget the pulp fiction novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Mars was the internal codename for the project that became known as MSN Explorer (the shipping name). Mars was mainly an interface design project, and became the core design for the new UI of the upcoming consumer OS,Windows XP. As you can see, they are very similar in concept; the logon screens are almost identical. This design is focused towards consumers and ease of use.

The Mars project was formerly known as Haley, and was very big inside of Microsoft. It had these really neat Alien posters that said "You've got Mars!" in spooky cheesy sci-fi flick letters. It was really quite cool.

The planet Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. The diameter is 6,794 km (compared to Earth's 12,756.3 km) and a mass of 6.4219 x 1023 kg about 1/10th of that of Earth. This results in a surface gravity of 0.38 that of Earth (3.69 m/s-2) and an escape velocity of 5.027 km/s-1 Pluto and Mercury are the only planets smaller than Mars.

At aphelion Mars is at a distance of 249,200,000 km from the sun. Perihelion is at 206,600,000 km. This is a much more eccentric (0.09) orbit than that of Earth which has a nearly perfect circular orbit (only 0.01 eccentricity - 0.00 is a perfect circle). The length of a Martin day is 24.622962 hours, a Martian year is 686.98 earth days or 667.76 Martian days.

The effect of this eccentricity is that the seasons are very uneven in length. Northern spring lasts 371 Martian days (more than half the Martian year), and summer solstice (separating spring from summer) occurs significantly later than halfway between spring and fall. The result of this is that the southern summer is short and warm while the northern summer is long and cool. This also creates differences in the composition of the polar caps. The southern cap is formed in the southern winter which is long and cold and is thought to be mostly dry ice. The northern polar cap is formed in the northern winter which is much warmer and thus would be made of water ice.

At an mean distance of 1.52 AU from the sun, this means that the planet gets much less sunlight. Earth receives 1370 watts/m2 while Mars receives only 445 watts/m2. This is known as the solar constant. This combined with the elliptical orbit results in large temperature fluctuations. The lowest temperature recorded was in northern hemisphere winter -124 C. The highest recorded temperature was -31 C. It is believed that temperatures may get as high as 20 C at the equator and -140 C at the poles.

The atmosphere of Mars has a mean pressure of 7 millibars (atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth is 1 about bar or 1000 millibars) and is primarily composed of CO2 (95.3%), N2 (2.7%), Ar (1.6%), and trace O2 (0.15%) and H2O (0.03%). At the deepest basin this goes up to 9 millibars, while the top of Olympus Mons is only 1 millibar. This atmosphere provides very little greenhouse effect and only raises the surface temperature about 7 degrees.

The total land surface area of Mars is about the same as that the land surface area of Earth. Of notable interest

  • Olympus Mons: Largest mountain in the Solar System rising 24km above the surrounding plane. The base of this ancient volcano is 500km in diameter and has a cliff 6km high. It is about as large as the state of Texas.
  • Tharsias: A huge bulge on the surface about 4000 km across (similar to the size width of the United States) and 10 km high.
  • Valles Marineris: A system of canyons 4000 km long and 2 to 7 km deep (again, similar in length to the width of the United States)
  • Hellas Planitia: The largest known impact crater in the Solar System over 6 km deep and 2000 km in diameter.

Mars was first successfuly visited in 1965 by the Mariner 4 spacecraft. Mars 2 was the first spacecraft to land on Mars, which was followed by the Viking landers in 1976. Twenty years later, Mars Pathfinder landed on July 4, 1997.

All missions are American unless otherwise mentioned.

  1. Mars 1 - Soviet - flyby - Launch November 1, 1962 - lost contact on March 21, 1963. Closest approach 193,000 km June 19, 1963
  2. Mariner 3 - flyby - (launched) November 5, 1964 - shroud which encased the spacecraft failed to open properly
  3. Mariner 4 - flyby - July 14, 1965
  4. Mariner 6 - flyby - July 31, 1969
  5. Mariner 7 - flyby - August 5, 1969
  6. Mariner 8 - (launched) May 8, 1971 - failed at launch
  7. Mariner 9 - orbiter - November 13, 1971
  8. Mars 2 - Soviet - lander/orbiter - (landed) November 27, 1971 - No data from lander retrieved. First landing on Mars.
  9. Mars 3 - Soviet - lander/orbiter - (landed) December 2, 1971 - Signals for 20 seconds after landing
  10. Mars 4 - Soviet - orbiter - (launched) May 28, 1971 - failed orbital insertion
  11. Mars 5 - Soviet - orbiter - February 2, 1974 - The only complete success of the Soviet Mars Program
  12. Mars 6 - Soviet - lander - March 12, 1974 - only 148 seconds of data after parachute open
  13. Mars 7 - Soviet - lander - (flyby) March 9, 1974 - retrorocket failure and missed Mars by 1,300 km.
  14. Viking 1 - lander - June 19, 1976
  15. Viking 2 - lander - August 7, 1976
  16. Mars 96 - Russian - (launched) November 16, 1996 - fell back to Earth
  17. Mars Observer - orbiter -(last transmission) August 22, 1993
  18. Mars Pathfinder - lander - July 4, 1997 - now known as Sagan Memorial Station in memory of Carl Sagan
  19. Mars Global Surveyor - orbiter - September 13, 1997
  20. Mars Climate Orbiter - orbiter - September 23, 1999 - entered atmosphere too low and burned up
  21. Mars Polar Lander/Deep Space 2 - lander - December 3, 1999 - lost upon arrival
  22. Mars Odyssey - (launched) April 7, 2001 - arrived October 23, 2001
  23. Mars Express - European Space Agency and Italian space agency (support from NASA Deep Space Network) - launch June 2, 2003 and December 2003 arrival. Some science equipment heritage from the Mars 96 mission. The lander (inserted on December 25, 2003) failed to respond so far (see for more info on this lander).
  24. 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity ) - launched June 10 and July 7, 2003. Spirit landed on Mars in Gusev Crater on January 3, 2004. Opportunity landed on January 24, 2004.

There is evidence that at one time, Mars had running water on the surface. This would have required a much thicker atmosphere. Some even theorize that life could have evolved on Mars first because it cooled off earlier due to its small size. This life would then have been ejected into space on a meteorite that could have fallen on Earth.

©Mahogany Pictures, 1996

Runtime 87 minutes.

Blurb Information:

Powerhouse action hero OLIVER GRUNNER (who's building a list of video hits that includes SAVAGE and NEMESIS) stars in the new sci-fi thriller MARS

Grunner plays an Inter-Galactic Cop who is drawn into a web of corruption on the lawless Mars colony, when he arrives to investigate a distress call received from his brother. In the tradition of TOTAL RECALL, MARS is an action-packed story set in the not too distant future.

I bet you're glad you asked...

marketroid = M = martian

Mars n.





The God of War

Mars was the son Jupiter (Zeus) and Juno (Hera). Both of them supposedly hated their son. His sister is Eris (Discord), and his nephew is Strife. He walks with Bellona (Enyo), the goddess of war. She brings with her Terror, Trembling, and Panic. Where ever they walk, groans are heard, and blood streams arise.

Romans liked the god Mars more than the Greeks liked Ares, his Greek counter-part. There are many differences between the Greek god of war and the Roman god of war. In Greek, Ares is a whining and uncaring deity, but in Roman mythology, Mars is a brave and wonderful warrior. There were however, no special cities where mars was worshipped and he was vaguely said to come from Thrace.

There is a story where Mars had an affair with Venus (Aphrodite), but was shamed and brought to justice by her husband, Vulcan (Hephaestus). His animal is a vulture, and the other animal is a dog. This lead to the saying, "Let loose the dogs of war."

Mars and its Satellites



Quick Factfile:

  • Deimos is the smallest known moon in our solar system.
  • Sometimes Mars has dust storms that cover the entire planet.

Mars in General:

Size of Mars:


Surface Landscape:








Structure of Mars:


Mars’ Atmosphere:


Martian Climate:


Mars in the Solar System:



Mars' History with Men:















A Recent History of Mars & Men:









The Feasibility of Life on Mars:

Is anyone home?






Let’s go colonising!










  • Scientific American - March 2002, May 1998 + SE Quarterly
  • New Scientist - September 1997
  • National Geographic - August 1998
  • The Inner Planets - Neil Ardley, Schoolhouse Press, 1987
  • Discovering the Planets - Jacqueline Mitton, Eagle Books, 1991
  • Mars - Dinah Moche, Franklin Watts, 1978
  • Mars - Elaine Landau, Franklin Watts, 1991
  • Planets and Satellites - Various authors, Belitha Press, 1994
  • Mars - Seymour Simon, A & C Black, 1987

MARS is a pretty interesting block cipher designed by a team at IBM, and submitted to the AES contest. It made it to the final group of 5 (out of the original 15), and, in the final vote, ended up taking 4th (just ahead of RC6). Like the other AES candidates, MARS encrypts a 128-bit block under the control of a 128, 192, or 256 bit key. For whatever reason, MARS has far more designers than any of the other AES submissions - 11 people! Included among these is Don Coppersmith, who has been around for ages, and worked on (among other things), the original DES design. And, by the way, no, I don't know why the name is all capital letters, as it is not an acronym as far as I can tell. But the original papers and design specs all use all-caps, so who am I to argue?

MARS uses a lot of different tricks - large(ish) random S-boxes, data dependent rotations, and multiplication, along with the more usual stuff (addition, subtraction, XOR, and fixed rotations). It also has a very interesting structural design, which is to split the cipher into three layers - first an unkeyed mixing layer, then the 'cryptographic core', and then another mixing layer. Whitening is used immediately before the first mixing and after the final mixing, so the operations can't just be stripped off by the cryptanalyst. The idea being that before someone could even look at attacking the inner core, they would have to break the mixing layers - and then they are still stuck trying to attack the inner core, which is by all accounts quite strong.

The disadvantage to MARS comes from the extra complexity of this multi-layered design. MARS is a serious hog in hardware, because its random S-boxes are basically impossible to implement in gates. Thus, one would have to use ROM, with all the extra complexity that involves. In addition, 32-bit multiplications and 32-bit general rotations take up a lot of resources. Now, in the end, we're not talking about much regardless - a few tens of thousands of extra gates is not going to mean much in cost, size, or heat. But since AES will be used in (pretty much) everything, including very low-end stuff, for the next 15-25 years, the smaller and cheaper in hardware, the better off everyone is.

And it is not that much fun in software, either. In particular, the cryptographic core likes to multiply some of it's inputs with key words. To prevent the use of 'bad' key words, which will interact poorly with the multiplication (values like 0, 1, powers of two, etc), MARS defines a special test for each key word, and this test is really tricky to do. You have to create a 'mask', where the bits of the mask are 1 iff the corresponding bit of the key word is part of a run of 0s or 1s that is 11 bits long or longer. Sorry, I know that's hard to parse, but that is as simple as I know how to phrase it. You have to have some serious bit bashing skillz to be able to see how to do it. And of course a 32-bit multiply is not easy on an 8-bit smartcard (this also worked against RC6).

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun (Earth is the third), and is well-known as a setting for science-fiction stories.

Space missions to Mars have so far all been automated due to the difficulties of sending humans to the red planet. The Viking landers of 1976 and 1980 were among the first to search for life, and the Pathfinder mission of 1997 began the use of remote-controlled rovers, currently embodied in the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, who landed in 2004 and continue their explorations today. One of the main themes of their current mission has been the search for evidence of past or present flowing water on Mars, and this search has been boosted by images from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express missions.

The geography of Mars (sometimes known as areography) includes the spectacular highlights of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System, and the Valles Marineris, a network of canyons which dwarves the Grand Canyon on Earth. The Hellas Planitia impact basin dominates the topography of Mars' southern hemisphere, and prominent ice-caps are visible at both north and south poles. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

The depiction of Mars in mythology and popular culture has led to its name being borrowed frequently, notably in the confectionery bar and company of the same name. Here is a selection of E2 nodes related to Mars in one way or another:

Geography (Areography)
Face on Mars
Hellas Planitia
Olympus Mons
Valles Marineris

Mars Climate Orbiter
Mars Direct
Mars Exploration Rovers
Mars Global Surveyor
Mars Polar Lander

Escape Velocity
James Cameron Mars speech
Living on Mars
Mars in Retrograde
Mars is barren
Mars Society
quick terraformation of Mars
The Life on Mars Problem
there's water on Mars!

Battered Mars Bar
deep fried Mars bar
Mars Bar
Mars Bar party
Mars Bar Slice
Mars, Incorporated
The Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour
The perfect way to eat a Mars Bar on a sunny day

2001 Mars Odyssey
A Princess of Mars
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars
Chessmen of Mars
David Starr, Space Ranger
Devil Girl from Mars
Distance on Mars
Ghosts of Mars
Green Mars
Invaders From Mars
John Carter
Kent Montana and the Really Ugly Thing From Mars
Lobster Men From Mars
Mars Attacks!
Mars Trilogy
Mission to Mars
Moving Mars
Podkayne of Mars
Racing Mars
Red Mars
Sailor Mars
The Far Call
The Martian Chronicles
The Road To Mars
The Wizard of Mars
Warlord of Mars

30 Seconds to Mars
Attack From Mars
From The Mars Hotel
Genius from Mars Technique
Girl from Mars
How to go to Mars as an Astronaut
Life On Mars?
Mars Blackmon
Mars' Cheese Castle
Mars Landing Party
Mars Lights
Mars Matrix
Mars Resistance
The Mars Volta
Melodies from Mars
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
Monuments of Mars
Planetary Linguistics
3rd Rock from the Sun
The Laziest Men on Mars
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Why digital media will get man to Mars

Mars (?), n. [L. Mars, gen. Martis, archaic Mavors, gen. Mavortis.]

1. Rom. Myth.

The god of war and husbandry.

2. Astron.


3. Alchemy

The metallic element iron, the symbol of which ♂ was the same as that of the planet Mars.



Mars brown, a bright, somewhat yellowish, brown.


© Webster 1913.

Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors.