The world of astronauts has recently been more excited with NASA's Mars mission. The trace targeted to know more about the Red Planet has already revealed a lot. Among the most impressive insights gathered by the astronaut giant, the most recent one is the discovery related to major metals existence in Mars. Among these massive developments, it should be known when Earth will appear at the closest point to this planet in the upcoming years.
According to Phys, both the planet has an immense number of similarities. The Red Planet has now even been hinted to have a keen chance of life on it. Both of them cover the sun on their own orbital path. However, being distant to each other, Earth and Mars hold different orbital periods. And due to this variation, both the planets have an accountable difference in their total count of a year. Mars' year's length is as twice as of the Earth's.
The distance between their orbits is also responsible for the distance between them in particular. While Earth completes a full orbit around the sun in 365.25 days, Mars orbits the sun at a slower speed and takes to cover the whole in 687 Earth days. During their orbits, they come closer to each other. In two years interval, Earth and Mars eventually come from being "at conjunction" and also go to being "at opposition." As per a report by NASA, last year, Mars appeared closest to Earth on May 30, 2016, when both the planet were in distance of approximately 75.3 million kilometers.
The next approach to Earth and Mars being the closest is about to happen on July 31, 2018. As per estimations, both the planet were the closest on accounts of distance on August 28th, 2003 at just 55,758,118 km. This similar type of closeness is estimated to happen again on August 28th, 2287 when Mars will just be a record breaking 55,688,405 km away from Earth.
