0
This question isn't quite as "easy" as it may initially seem. Here's why. The earth and Mars are in orbit around the sun. At times, the earth, Mars and the sun line up. But they can all line up with earth and Mars on the same side of the sun, or they can line up with the earth and Mars on opposite sides of the sun. Yeah, that's right. In the first case, they're sorta close, and in the other, they're a long, long way apart. There's more. The earth and Mars don't move in a circle around the sun. Their orbits are slightly eliptical. This means that at times they'll be a little closer to the sun than at other times. When they're farthest away from the sun, we call that aphelion, and when they're closest to the sun, we call that perihelion. Let's dump the numbers on you now that we've sorted out the basics: Mars: Aphelion - 249,209,300 km; and Perihelion - 206,669,000 km Earth: Aphelion - 152,097,701 km; and Perihelion - 147,098,074 km The last little slice of datum we need lay out is that they aren't both nessissarily at aphelion or perihelion when they are lined up. But let's just say that they are for the sake of this exercise. Just for fun. We'd have to crunch some serious numbers to find out actually when this would occur, by the way. Some serious numbers. It ain't often. If earth and Mars are lined up on opposite sides of the sun and both are at aphelion, then they're about 401,307,001 km apart. That's about 249,360,610 miles. This represents the maximumdistance they can be from each other. But you needed a minimum. Let's work on that. With the two planets on the same side of the sun, we need to "maximize the closeness" in this case. To do this, we need Mars, which is farther out from the sun than earth, to be at its closest point to the sun, or perihelion. We'll need earth, which orbits "inside" Mars, to be as far from the sun as it gets, or at aphelion. This geometry will put the red planet and earth closest to each other. This distance will be about 54,571,299 km, or about 33,909,033 miles. And that's about as near as these two planets get. Links to the Wikipedia articles on both of these two neighboring bodies can be found below.
Still curious? Ask our experts.
Chat with our AI personalities
Taiga
Beau
Fran
Add your answer:
Earn +20 pts
How many miles is Mars from the earth?
Mars is an average of about 140 million miles away from Earth. However, this distance can vary due to the elliptical shapes of their orbits.
What is Mars closest planet and how far away is that planet?
Mars' closest planet is Earth. On average, the distance between Earth and Mars is about 225 million kilometers (140 million miles), but this can vary depending on their positions in their respective orbits around the Sun.
Closest planet to Mars?
the Earth The Earth is the closest planet to Mars. During the period of their orbits, Mars is 34 million mi (55 million km) away from the Earth at their closest and 249 million mi (400 million km) at their farthest to each other. Just for comparison, Mars gets within approx. 304 million mi (490 million km) to Jupiter at their closest. Interestingly enough, Jupiter is so far away from Mars that, at all times, Mars is closer to Mercury than it is to Jupiter.
How far is Mars from the earth and the sun?
On average, Mars is about 225 million kilometers (140 million miles) away from Earth. In terms of distance from the sun, Mars is about 228 million kilometers (142 million miles) away on average, as it orbits the sun in an elliptical path.
How far is mars from earth in miles and Au's?
The Earth is 1 AU from the Sun while Mars is 1.52 AU from the Sun so the distance from Earth to Mars varies from 1.52-1 to 1.52+1 AU, which is quite a range. To put AUs into miles multiply by 93,000,000.
