18 Years Ago Today In Space

18 years ago today, on August 27th, 2003, humanity would look upon the stars to an usual sight. Earth’s neighbor planet Mars was astoundingly large, in fact. It was the largest it had been in over 60,000 years. The red planet was a mere 34.6 million miles from earth. While this number still seems very large, we should remember that the average distance from Earth to Mars is around 140 million miles. This puts Mars just about 4 times closer than an average night.

It would be a long time until Mars was a comparable distance to the Earth again. In 2018, however, it almost reached the distance it achieved in 2003. On the night of July 27th, 2018, Mars was only 35.8 million miles from earth. That night, it would also be nearly 10 times brighter than an average night.

While many greatly exaggerated the size of Mars during its journey to the proximity of earth, the truth is that Mars was still significantly smaller than the moon, and only marginally brighter than it typically was. To the trained eye, however, it is quite a spectacle and one that is surely appreciated because of its unusual occurrence. Mars won’t top its record-setting 2003 distance for quite some time. In 2287, the record will finally be broken when Mars will reach only 34.6 million miles away.

Trevor Riggle

August 27th, 2021