--- title: Mars — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Mars», a lesson of the space course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Mars, the fourth planet, further from the Sun than the Earth, is the red planet, and it is red for the same reason an old bike goes orange: its dust and rocks are full --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/) / Mars # Mars Lesson 8 of the space course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/space/8-mars/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/0/) — Mars, the fourth planet, further from the Sun than the Earth, is the red planet, and it is red for the same reason an old bike goes orange: its dust and rocks are full of iron oxide, rust. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/1/) — It is about half the Earth's width, and its day is almost like ours, only 40 minutes longer, but its thin air is mostly carbon dioxide and it is far colder than Antarctica on average. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/2/) — Mars has record-breakers: Olympus Mons, a volcano two and a half times taller than Everest, and Valles Marineris, a canyon that would stretch across Europe. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/3/) — Long ago water flowed there in rivers and lakes; today it is frozen in ice caps and underground, and rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance search the old lake beds for signs of ancient life. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/4/) — No life has been found yet; a 2025 rock sample has patterns that could be a sign of old microbes, but scientists say it is only a possible sign, not proof. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/5/) — Mars looks red because its surface dust and rocks contain iron oxide, which is rust. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/6/) — Mars is about half the Earth's width, and its day, called a sol, is about 24 hours 40 minutes. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/7/) — Mars has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, less than one percent of the Earth's, and an average temperature of about minus 60 degrees Celsius. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/8/) — Olympus Mons on Mars is the tallest volcano in the Solar System, about 22 kilometres high, about two and a half times the height of Everest above sea level. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/9/) — Valles Marineris is a canyon system about 4,000 kilometres long and up to 7 kilometres deep, which would stretch across the whole of Europe. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/10/) — Mars once had rivers, lakes and perhaps a sea, and today its water is mostly frozen in polar ice caps and under the ground. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/11/) — NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012, and Perseverance has explored Jezero Crater, an old lake bed, since 2021. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/12/) — No life has been found on Mars, but in 2025 scientists reported that a Perseverance rock sample has chemical patterns that could be a possible sign of ancient microbes; this is not proof. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/13/) — Curiosity found smooth, rounded pebbles like those in a stream, a sign that water once flowed there. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/14/) — Mars has dust storms that can cover the whole planet for weeks; a storm in 2018 blocked the sunlight and covered the solar panels of the rover Opportunity, and it never woke again. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/15/) — Mars has two small, lumpy moons, Phobos and Deimos, probably captured asteroids or pieces from an ancient impact; scientists are not yet sure which. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/8-mars/16/) — Phobos is spiralling slowly inwards, and in about 50 million years it will crash into Mars or break into a ring. - ← previous: [Phases, eclipses and tides](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/7-phases-eclipses-and-tides/) - next →: [Asteroids and the asteroid belt](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/9-asteroids-and-the-asteroid-belt/) - ↑ back to [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/)