Mars making closest approach to Earth in 15 years

The observatory’s free viewing event will begin at 10 p.m. Monday and last until 2 a.m. Tuesday.

The Observatory said: “For four hours, beginning on Monday night, July 30, at 10pm, Griffith Observatory provides a rare opportunity of you to see the planet Mars at its closest”.

That’s because Earth’s orbit around the sun is 365 days, but it takes Mars 687 days to take a lap around our star. In addition, while we have somewhat of an abundance of Carbon dioxide and greenhouses gasses on Earth, there isn’t enough on Mars. We are talking about a distance of 57.6 million kilometers.

Compared to Year 2018, it will take another 17 Years for Mars to match this year’s record in September 2035. “Both Mars and the Earth orbit the sun but their orbits are not exactly circular, so there are points where they come closer together, and this is one of them”. It turned out that carbon dioxide on the red planet is not enough, and most of the available carbon dioxide may not be emitted into the atmosphere.

“It is significant…. If you look at Mars through a telescope, it appears about twice as big now as it would have appeared, say, seven years ago”.

When Mars knocked on our door in 2003, it was the first time the Red Planet came that close in some 60,000 years, according to Space.com. NASA said that won’t happen again until 2287.

This phenomenon is expected to occur next in 2034. We challenged citizen inventors from all over the world to imagine life-supporting environments on the Red Planet using specialized 3-D software tools.

There will be something very cool to see in the sky tonight.

Proponents of terraforming Mars propose releasing gases from a variety of sources on the Red Planet to thicken the atmosphere and increase the temperature to the point where liquid water is stable on the surface. The Red Planet hadn’t been that close to Earth since August 2003.

This process of colonising other planets is known as terraforming when it refers to shaping their environments so they are more like Earth. The live stream can be found on the space agency’s website, or NASA’s YouTube channel from 1.30pm EST (around 11pm IST).

Mars will next be close to Earth in October 2020.