Surface Area of the Earth
Written by Fraser Cain
The total surface area of the Earth is 510 million square kilometers.
Of course, that's not a terribly useful number since parts of the Earth are made up of land, and parts are covered in water. So let's break that up a little bit. 29.2% of the Earth's surface is covered by land (149 million km2), and 70.8% of the Earth's surface is water (361 million km2).
Now let's compare that surface area to a few other planets in the Solar System. Venus is considered to be our twin planet, since it's so similar in size. But Venus actually only has 90% the surface of the Earth. Mars only has about 28% the surface area of the Earth. What's interesting is that number matches the land area of Earth, so the total surface of Mars is roughly the same as the dry land surface of Earth. The Moon has only 7% the surface area of the Earth.
We have written many articles about the Earth for Universe Today. Here's an article about viewing the Earth as an extrasolar planet, and here's an article about Google Earth, but for astronomy.
Want more resources on the Earth? Here's a link to NASA's Human Spaceflight page, and here's NASA's Visible Earth.
We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about Earth, as part of our tour through the Solar System – Episode 51: Earth.
Filed under: Astronomy
