OUR CHANGING VIEWS OF MARS – EVER CLEARER IMAGES OF THE RED PLANET: Left: One of Percival Lowell’s drawings of Mars, based on telescopic observations
made from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona about 1914. Centre: Mariner 4 image of the crater named after it, the 151 km diameter Mariner crater at 35° S,
164° W. Mariner 4 was the first successful fly-by of Mars, and the first ever mission to obtain close-up images of another planet. This one was taken from 12,600 km dur-
ing the spacecraft’s July 1965 fly-by. North is up. Right: Up close and personal. Sand ridges imaged by MRO’s HiRISE camera. Shaped by the constant Martian wind, these
dune-like features stand up to 6 meters (18 feet) tall. Credits: Left: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain; Centre: Mariner 4-NASA; Right: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
What next?
We have long since dispelled Percival Lowell’s dreams of Martian
civilisations, inspired by the 19th century works of Giovanni Schiaparelli
and Camille Flammarion. Their maps, based on telescopic observations
of the time, had shown ‘canali’ – channels, natural or artificial –which
ultimately proved to be spurious optical illusions, as did those seen by
Lowell himself. And we have come a long way from the grainy photos
of Mars taken by the early missions of the 1960s, although many as-
tronomers still believed up to this time that there might be some form of
hardy life on this tantalising world.
The missions currently active at Mars have helped provide us with an
increasingly detailed understanding of the planet’s atmosphere, sur-
face environment, history of water, and potential for life.
Looking ahead, despite the failure of Schiaparelli, ESA member states
agreed, at a council meeting in December, to fund the extra €436 mil-
lion ($466 million) needed to ensure delivery of the second stage of the
two-part Exomars mission, which is due to land a rover on the Red Plan-
et in 2021 to drill into the Martian soil and look for biochemical traces of
living or fossil organisms.
As for NASA, its FY 2017 Budget Request kept on track its Mars 2020
rover plans, although it now remains to be seen where the priorities of
the new Administration will lie. Before this, in 2018, we hope to see the
launch of InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geod-
esy and Heat Transport), the first mission dedicated to investigating the
deep interior of Mars.
However, cuts to planetary science budgets - despite recent spec-
tacular successes, not only at Mars, but across the Solar System from
Ceres to Saturn and beyond to Pluto - mean that we might not see
such a golden age of robotic exploration again for a while. And the
manned exploration of the Red Planet still looks far off for now. In the
meantime, these orbiters and rovers, now hardy veterans, will continue
to be our pioneering emissaries at the Red Planet.
To find out more on the current Mars missions, their science payloads
and discoveries, visit:
• https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/main/index.html
• http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express
• http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25-mars-orbiter-mission
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