Mars has many faces, including some that look like Earth

WE KNOW by now that Mars used to be a planet similar to Earth, but new pictures and video from NASA show its much closer than we imagined.

Martian bedrock and sand dunes look very much like Earth. Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

MARS is known as a freezing, dry world covered in red dust, with canyons, volcanoes, empty lake beds and craters spread across its surface.

But did you know this wasn’t always the case, with the red planet once very similar to Earth.

Earlier this year, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) surpassed 50,000 orbits of the red planet and capturing features that would not look out of place on Earth.

NASA recently showcased the similarities between the red planet and our own, with a video portraying the many faces of Mars.

“Earth has more in common with Mars than you might think,” the video description reads. “Colour-enhanced images like these help scientists interpret dynamic features on the Red Planet.

These images aren’t the first to prove the red planet was once much closer to our own, with the 2015 discovery of flowing water on Mars giving scientists greater insight.

“We now know Mars was a planet very much like Earth, with warm salty seas, with freshwater lakes, probably snow-capped peaks and clouds, and a water cycle just like we’re studying here on Earth,” director of planetary science at NASA headquarters Jim Green said at the time.

“But something has happened to Mars and it lost its water, but we still have in the atmosphere and on the surface for the most part.”

The MRO first launched in 2005, arrived in orbit around Mars 12 months later and has captured more than 300 terabits of data since.