With Perseverance & Ingenuity ,
Mars 2020 mission takes search for life to next level
By ANDREA SÁNCHEZ SALDIAS
Guest Contributor
Mars has aroused the interest of mankind since immemorial times , probably because its reddish coloration is noticeable in the sky . Ancient civilizations named it in honor of different deities that were associated with its reddish color , the color of blood and war : for the Greeks it was Ares and for the Romans Mars . Aristotle , in the 4th century BC , observed an occultation of Mars by the Moon , thus deducing that Mars was further away than our natural satellite . Tycho Brahe made , between 1580 and 1600 , the most accurate observations of the position of Mars of this period and Galileo Galilei in 1610 observed it for the first time through his telescope . In 1877 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed structures on the surface of Mars that he called “ canali ” in his native Italian
Right , NASA ’ s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z , a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover . This image was taken on April 5 , 2021 , the 45th Martian day , or sol , of the mission . The mosaic is not white balanced but is instead displayed in a preliminary calibrated version of a natural color composite , approximately simulating the colors of the scene that we would see if we were there viewing it ourselves .
COURTESY OF Meyers Konversations-Lexikon ( German encyclopaedia ), 1888
Schiaparelli ’ s map of the Martian surface .
language . This term was translated into English as ‘ channels ’, which led to thinking about artificial structures . In 1894 , the American astronomer Percival Lowell built an observatory for the systematic observation of the red planet and , influenced by Schiaparelli ’ s observations , came to develop hypotheses that explained these channels as great works of extraterrestrial engineering destined to bring water from the poles to the
Credit : NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU
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