Mystique of Mars

▪ 2005

by Dave Dooling

      On Aug. 27, 2003, thousands of people lined up at telescopes to glimpse Mars during its closest approach to Earth in more than 60,000 years (at a distance of 56 million km [35 million mi]). Even though more highly detailed images were readily available from robotic spacecraft, why did people want a firsthand view? Simple: Mars attracts. Of all the planets, it is the most similar to Earth in many ways. It has a transparent atmosphere (though thin and consisting largely of carbon dioxide), a day that is only 37 minutes longer than that of Earth, and even an ice cap that waxes and wanes with the seasons. Most important of all, Mars might harbour life.

      Fascination with Mars took off with a simple mistranslation. Among the surface features reported in 1877 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli were canali. By that term he meant channels (which can be of natural origin), but the translation to English was canals, which implied that the features had been built artificially. No oceans or other bodies of water were visible, so it became all too easy to conjure images of a dying Martian civilization engaged in immense irrigation projects to delay inevitable desertification.

      American astronomer Percival Lowell picked up on this fanciful thinking, and in his observations he saw exquisitely fine structures that he associated with canals. He then helped popularize them in his writings, including Mars (1895) and Mars as the Abode of Life (1908). Other astronomers were unable to reproduce Lowell's observations, however, and later studies of the planet eventually dispelled the notion of canals. (A possible explanation for Lowell's observations is that he was seeing, with striking clarity, the blood vessels in the retina of his eye; Lowell masked the secondary mirror of his telescope to such an extent to dim the brightness of Mars that he might have, in effect, turned the telescope into an ophthalmoscope.)

      In the 1960s and '70s, the robot surrogates of the Space Age brought Mars closer to its human observers. NASA's Mariner 4, the first spacecraft to fly by Mars (July 1965), sent back pictures of a bleak, cratered world. The Mariner 6 and 7 flyby missions (July and August 1969) reaffirmed this view. When Mariner 9 went into Martian orbit (November 1971), a planet wide dust storm was at its height, but as the dust settled, the improved imaging devices on the probe revealed dazzling geologic features, from towering extinct volcanoes to gaping dry valleys.

      Mars 3, launched by the U.S.S.R., was the first Mars lander (Dec. 2, 1971), but it went silent after only 20 seconds on the surface. The Viking 1 and 2 landers, NASA spacecraft designed to detect life on Mars, touched down successfully (July 20 and Sept. 3, 1976). Over the next few years, onboard labs did not detect life as it is known on Earth, but they did reveal some unusual chemistry in the surface material they analyzed. The inconclusive results stirred controversy for many years.

      In the mid-1990s the public was showered anew with images of Mars. These images were provided by the Mars Global Surveyor, which went into orbit around Mars (September 1997), and the Sojourner rover, which landed on (July 4, 1997) and traveled over its surface. In 1996 NASA scientists announced what they believed to be signs of life inside a meteorite named ALH84001, which had been discovered in near-pristine condition in Antarctica. The composition of the meteorite showed that it was from Mars (as are some 1% of all known meteorites). Microscopic examinations had revealed structures that the NASA scientists took to be minute bacteria, but some other scientists judged the structures to be the result of nonbiological chemical processes. Most scientists agreed, though, that ALH84001 contained carbonates that were formed by water-based processes on Mars.

      Exploration of Mars suffered a setback with the back-to-back failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter (launched 1998) and the Mars Polar Lander (1999) and its Deep Space 2 surface-penetration probes. (About a third of all space missions sent to Mars have failed for a variety of reasons.) After a thorough reassessment, NASA pressed on successfully with the Mars Odyssey orbiter and the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit (landed Jan. 3, 2004) and Opportunity (Jan. 25, 2004). Europe had success with the Mars Express orbiter (2003), but lost its Beagle 2 lander (2003).

      A common finding for all of these missions was evidence that Mars once had plentiful water. The Mars Odyssey orbiter and the Mars Express orbiter sent back to Earth thousands of images revealing outflow channels and valley networks that apparently had been formed by flowing water. Among the discoveries of Opportunity, which was equipped with tools to assay chemicals in rocks, were the mineral jarosite (which is typically formed in acidic lakes or hot springs), rock indentations called vugs (which are typically formed when crystals dissolve from rocks), and spherules (which are sometimes formed by minerals emerging from porous rock). Images of the Martian surface taken by cameras on Opportunity showed types of sand banding called festooning and crossbedding, which led American scientists to announce that the landing site might once have been the shore of a salty sea. Data from the Mars Global Surveyor indicated that the sea would have been as large as the Great Lakes or the Baltic Sea. A separate finding by the Mars Express orbiter was the existence of traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Because the methane would normally have become oxidized within a few hundred years, scientists believed it undergoes replenishment, with the mostly likely sources being volcanoes or living organisms.

      Future robotic missions include the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (a U.S. spacecraft to arrive at Mars in 2006) for high-resolution imagery of potential landing sites, a cluster of four Netlanders ( France, to launch 2007), and the Mars Science Laboratory (U.S., 2009) to roam the planet for a full Martian year. For the decade following, the United States and France planned missions that would return to Earth with samples from the surface of Mars, but sending humans to explore the planet has become the long-term goal.

      Even as it was reaching the Moon, NASA sketched plans for human expeditions to Mars. In September 1969 a presidential task group envisioned expeditions with two separate ships under nuclear propulsion, each carrying six astronauts. The first landings were to come as early as 1982, but no funding was forthcoming. Indeed, the U.S. pulled back from plans to explore Mars and canceled the Apollo program as well, ending exploration of the Moon. Several false starts followed, most notably the high-priced proposals of the “90-Day Study” commissioned by Pres. George H.W. Bush in 1989. The loss of space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, seemed to serve as a turning point in returning to plans for the human exploration of Mars. In the wake of the tragedy, the administration of Pres. George W. Bush moved to retire the shuttle program around 2010 and to discontinue U.S. participation aboard the International Space Station at that time. NASA was directed instead to start planning exploration programs that would take humans back to the Moon by 2020, setting the stage for going onward to Mars. A new Crew Exploration Vehicle would be designed to carry humans to space starting in 2014. A wide range of technologies would need to be developed, including nuclear rockets, which had been abandoned in the 1970s, and advanced radiation shielding to protect astronauts living for years in space.

      “Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea,” President Bush said at the Jan. 14, 2004, White House ceremony announcing the new direction in the U.S. space program. “We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey.”

Dave Dooling is the Education and Public Outreach Officer at the National Solar Observatory, Sacramento Peak, New Mexico, and coauthor of Engineering Tomorrow.

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