Star System: Sol
Astronomical Designation: Mars
Astronomical Name: Sol 4
Class: Class M
Radius: 3389.5 km
Mass: 6.39 x 1023 kg
Satellites: Deimos, Phobos
Atmosphere: CO2 with minimal oxygen
Population: 900 million
Political Information:
Polity: Citizens’ Republic of Mars
Status: Core World
Government: Social Democracy
Capital: Weir
Mars is the fourth planet orbiting Sol. It is the first planet colonized by sapiens humans, the first visitors arriving in the early twenty-first century AD.
With a thin atmosphere, no magnetic field, and a distance farther than Earth and Venus from Sol, the planet has been undergoing terraforming since it became a colony shortly after the World War Era ended. As of 434 IE, Mars still had a largely CO2 atmosphere after four centuries of terraforming work.
Mars became independent of Earth after the Earth-Mars War, which led to the founding of the Compact. Nominally, Mars was a socialist entity, though some noticed a profit motive behind many of its enterprises. With Earth, Mars was one of the so-called Big Five worlds (the others being Tian, Etrusca, and The Caliphate.) As of 429, Mars had two colonies, the Class-M Farigha and Class-E Amargosa. However, after both colonies fell to a Gelt invasion, the Compact Assembly gave both worlds to Metis in an effort to prevent that world’s legal secession. Mars’s Assembly delegation came under fire when it ignored the invasion of Farigha and blocked efforts to liberate Gilead (later Hanar).