Could people turn Mars into another Earth? Here's what it would take to transform its barren landscape into a life-friendly ...

The orbit any planet makes around its parent star is fixed and knowable. Earth takes 365.256 days to make a single lap around the sun. (The 365 part is how we measure our year, and the .256 is why ...

This Monday evening (May 30) at 5:35 p.m. ET, Mars will be the closest it has been to Earth since Oct. 5, 2005: 0.50321377 astronomical units (AU), or 46,762,695 miles . (One AU is the average ...

The distance to Mars from Earth constantly changes as they orbit the sun. The average distance between Earth and Mars is 140 million miles (225 million km).

On Aug. 25, 2003, Mars came within 34.6 million miles of Earth – the closest it had been in 60,000 years. The astronomers at Sky & Telescope say we can look forward to a similarly close approach ...

This orbit lineup for Earth and Mars happens every two years, according to NASA. However, this "short" distance between Earth and Mars won't happen for another 15 years or at least until 2035.

For example, while Earth only takes 365 days to complete an orbit around the sun, Mars takes 687 days. When Earth moves closer to the sun, Mars moves away from it. NASA/JPL ...

Three were sent there by NASA: Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and MAVEN, which left Earth in 2013. Europe has two spacecraft in orbit.

What will happen during Mars Orbit Insertion? On the appointed day, Odyssey will be approaching Mars at a speed of 5.907 kilometers per second, or 13,214 miles per hour.

And, critically, crews would be able to control surface robotics and communicate with human explorers on surface missions nearly instantaneously, instead of dealing with an Earth-Mars lag time ...

In 2011, a Mars-bound Chinese orbiter that was part of a Russian mission didn’t make it out of Earth orbit. NASA IS EXTENDING MARS AND JUPITER MISSIONS, CITING NOTABLE SUCCESS ...