Escape Velocity of Mars
| Value | 5030 m/s |
| Status | Conventional / typical value |
| Source | Derived from the JPL DE440 Mars GM and the mean radius |
| Categories | Astronomicalsolar-systemplanets |
| meter per second | 5,030 m/s |
| kilometer per hour | 18,108 km/h |
| foot per second | 16,502.625 ft/s |
| mile per hour | 11,251.79 mph |
| knot | 9,777.5378 kn |
| foot per minute | 990,157.48 ft/min |
| centimeter per second | 503,000 cm/s |
| meter per hour | 18,108,000 m/h |
| meter per day | 434,592,000 m/d |
| foot per day | 1,425,826,800 ft/d |
Learning zone
Escaping Mars costs roughly 5.0 km/s against Earth's 11.2, and with a thin atmosphere imposing little drag loss the practical ascent budget is around 4.1 km/s to low Mars orbit. That asymmetry is the foundation of every sample-return and crewed architecture: fuel manufactured on Mars from atmospheric carbon dioxide, as MOXIE demonstrated in miniature on Perseverance, goes much further than fuel hauled from Earth.
The same modest escape velocity works against the planet's ability to keep gases. Hydrogen from photodissociated water escapes readily, and the solar wind strips heavier ions now that there is no magnetic field to deflect it — the isotopic enrichment of deuterium and of heavy argon in the present atmosphere is the fingerprint of billions of years of that loss. It also explains why impacts can fling rock off Mars: over 300 Martian meteorites have been recovered on Earth.