• Question: how heavy is mars

    Asked by morgan1234 to Austin, Kirsty, Nike on 21 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Nike Dattani

      Nike Dattani answered on 21 Jun 2012:

      It’s just a bit more than half the planet of Earth.

      It’s about the mass of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 humans !! (22 zeros !)

    • Photo: Kirsty Ross

      Kirsty Ross answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      That can be a tricky question to answer! Mass is the amount of matter in a particular object. Weight is your mass multiplied by the pull of gravity. You will weigh a certain amount standing on earth, but if you were standing on Mars you would be lighter and if you were on Jupiter you’d probably be squished to a pulp as your bones wouldn’t withstand the force of gravity.

      Given that Mars is suspended in space, it technically doesn’t ‘weigh’ anything! However, Mars has a mass of 6.4191 × 10^23 kilograms. Written out fully, it has a mass of 641910000000000000000000kg or equal to 0.64 Earths.

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