Mars
Life on Mars? The Search for Signs Goes Back Centuries
In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli turned his telescope to Mars and saw signs of a potentially lush world. He would publish his observations of what he believed to be “seas” and “continents” on the Martian surface. He also described channels (later found to be an ...read more
How the Search for Little Green Men—or Any Life on Mars—Got Smarter
Humans have been captivated by Mars almost as long as we’ve been watching the night sky. The ancient Greeks and Romans watched nightly as a reddish dot moved among the stars, growing dimmer and brighter in a two-year cycle. Each named it for the god of war; the Roman version, ...read more
Mars and Martian Mania: A Brief History
1. Giovanni Schiaparelli sees “channels” on the surface of Mars in 1877, and speculation runs rampant that intelligent beings created them. What a difference a word makes. When Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli peered through his telescope in 1877 to view the surface of ...read more
Mariner 4 studies Martian surface
The unmanned spacecraft Mariner 4 passes over Mars at an altitude of 6,000 feet and sends back to Earth the first close-up images of the red planet. Launched in November 1964, Mariner 4 carried a television camera and six other science instruments to study Mars and interplanetary ...read more
Pathfinder lands on Mars
After traveling 120 million miles in seven months, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder becomes the first U.S. spacecraft to land on Mars in more than two decades. In an ingenious, cost-saving landing procedure, Pathfinder used parachutes to slow its approach to the Martian surface and then ...read more