Names
Other civilizations also named Mars for its red color - for example, the Egyptians called it “Her Desher”, meaning “the _________ one”.
Red
Venus has the __________ surface in the solar system, apart from the sun.
hottest
Mars is about half the size of _______.
Earth
Like Earth, Mars has distinct seasons, but they are _____ than seasons here on Earth since Mars takes longer to orbit the Sun (because it's farther away).
longer
Mars is the only planet inhabited entirely by _______.
robots
Most features on Venus are named for ___________.
women
Martian days are called ______ – short for "solar day."
sols
Venus was formed through the attraction of swirling gas and dust from the __________.
Sun
Venus' atmosphere is mainly _________ ___________, causing a greenhouse effect.
carbon dioxide
Today, water on Mars is found in the form of ______ just under the surface in the polar regions as well as in briny (salty) water, which seasonally flows down some hillsides and crater walls.
ice
Romans named bright objects in the sky after important gods; Venus is the only planet named after a ___________ god.
female
Venus has an incredibly hot surface, with temperatures around __________F.
900 degrees
Mars has a thin atmosphere composed mainly of carbon dioxide (about 95.3%) with traces of _______ and argon.
nitrogen
Mars has two small ______, Phobos and Deimos, that may be captured asteroids. They're potato-shaped because they have too little _______ for gravity to make them spherical.
moons, mass
Venus, named after the Roman goddess of _________ and beauty, is known as ________________ to the Greeks.
Love, Aphrodite
The Venus surface has ________, high pressure ___________ dioxide, behaving corrosively.
hot, carbon
Like other terrestrial planets, Venus has a central core, ________ _________, and a solid crust.
a rocky mantle
Venus' clouds are composed of _____________ acid.
sulfric
Venus has ______ times Earth’s atmospheric pressure, akin to the pressure ____km deep in Earth’s _______.
90, 1, oceans
Even today, Mars is frequently called the _______ _________ because iron minerals in the Martian dirt oxidize, or _________, causing the surface to look red.
Red Planet, rust
Spring in the northern hemisphere (autumn in the southern) is Mars' longest season at _____ sols.
194
When the solar system settled into its current layout about ______ years ago, Mars formed when gravity pulled swirling _______ and dust in.
4.5 billion, gas
While here on Earth the seasons are evenly spread over the year, lasting 3 months (or one quarter of a year), on Mars the seasons vary in length because of Mars' ___________, egg-shaped orbit around the Sun.
elliptical
The Soviet Union's Venera program sent probes to Venus from _______ to _________.
1961 to 1984