Planetary Assignment
Mercury:
a) Mercury is a terrestrial planet because it is an inner planet and also made up of heavy planets. It is terrestrial also because it has no natural satellite and no substantial atmosphere. b) Mercury has thin atmosphere consists of helium, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, calcium and potassium. c) Mercury has no moons. d) Mercury’s diameter is 38% the diameter or earth. e) Mercury is .38AU from the sun. f) It takes 87.97 earth days to orbit the sun and one day on mercury is 58days and 15hours. g) The crater at mercury’s poles contains water ice. h) The BepiColombo mission is still in development and will study Mercury’s unusually powerful magnetosphere and the region of space around the planet that is dominated by its magnetic field and it will also search for more possible signs of water ice.

Venus

a) Venus is a terrestrial planet because it is rock and one of the four inner planets. b) Venus has a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere along with thick toxic atmosphere which traps the heat making it the hottest planet in the solar system. c) Venus has no moons because it is so close to the sun that it’s almost impossible for it to have moons many theories state that it might have had moons before but suns gravitational force pulled it away. d) The diameter of Venus is 12,100km that is 95% of earth’s diameter. Venus fits into earth about 1.5 times. e) Venus is .722AU’s away from the sun. f) It takes 224.7 days to orbit the sun and it takes 243 days to make one complete rotation. g) Venus rotates backwards it rotates in a clockwise direction. The average temperature of Venus is 460degrees Celsius that is 410degerees Celsius hotter than the hottest dense part of the earth. The main reason it’s hot is because of its thick toxic atmosphere. h) The future mission of Venus is Venus In-Situ Explorer (VISE) which might be launched in 2013 and would perform experiments on the surface of Venus.
Mars:

a) Mars is a terrestrial planet because it is made up of core, mantle and crust. b) Mars’s atmosphere is less than 1% of earth so it doesn’t protect from sun radiation. It is made up of 95% of CO2 3% Nitrogen and 1.6% Argon and the rest is trace amounts of Oxygen’s with small particles of dust mainly iron oxide. c) Mars has 2 small asteroid sized moons and they are formed because they were first asteroids and then started to go around Mars. d) The diameter of Mars is 6,800km which is 53% diameter of earth. e) Mars is 1.522AU’s away from the sun. f) It takes 686.671 earth days to orbit the sun and 24hours 39minutes and 35seconds to make a complete rotation. g) Mars’s surface is filled with volcanoes, there are so many volcanoes on mars and some of them are large because the planet has not yet had plate tectonic action. h) MAVEN (Mars atmospheric and Volcanic Evolution) this mission will help us understand the drastic climate change.

Jupiter:

a) Jupiter is a Jovian planet because it is a gas giant yet it has a rocky core within balls of gas. b) Its atmosphere is made up of 90% hydrogen and 10% Helium. The atmospheric layers are troposphere, stratosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. There were different colors and it is red because of Nh3, White because of NH4SH, Brown because of H2O and NH4, and blue because of CO2 and H20. c) There are 50 moons and 16 provisional moons. Eight of those moons are regular satellites with prograde orbit and the remainders are irregular satellite with prograde and retrograde orbits which are further away from the Jupiter. d) Jupiter has diameter about 10times the size of earth and is 300 times more massive than earth. e) Jupiter is 5.90AU’s away from sun. f) It takes 11.86 years for Jupiter to orbit the sun and one takes 9.97 hours to make one rotation. g) Jupiter’s moon Europa has a bright surface because of sunlight reflecting off a relatively icy