10.1: Exploration

Observations from Earth

Mars is more interesting to most people than Venus because it is more hospitable. Even from the distance of Earth, we can see surface features on Mars and follow the seasonal changes in its polar caps (Figure 10.13). Although the surface today is dry and cold, evidence collected by spacecraft suggests that Mars once had blue skies and lakes of liquid water. Even today, it is the sort of place we can imagine astronauts visiting and perhaps even setting up permanent bases.

Figure 10.13 : Mars Photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is one of the best photos of Mars taken from our planet, obtained in June 2001 when Mars was only 68 million kilometers away. The resolution is about 20 kilometers—much better than can be obtained with ground-based telescopes but still insufficient to reveal the underlying geology of Mars. (credit: modification of work by NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

 

As you might expect from close neighbors, Mars and Venus are among the brightest objects in the night sky. The average distance of Mars from the Sun is 227 million kilometers (1.52 AU), or about half again as far from the Sun as Earth. Venus’ orbit is very nearly circular, at a distance of 108 million kilometers (0.72 AU) from the Sun. Like Mercury, Venus sometimes appears as an “evening star” and sometimes as a “morning star.” Venus approaches Earth more closely than does any other planet: at its nearest, it is only 40 million kilometers from us. The closest Mars ever gets to Earth is about 56 million kilometers.

Before spacecraft and more-advanced equipment, we depended on the eye and photography to decipher and understand what we saw in the Universe. Mars was – and it still is – interesting because it is so close to Earth and somewhat “Earth-like. ”

In contrast, Mars is more tantalizing as seen through a telescope (Figure 10.3). The planet is distinctly red, due (as we now know) to the presence of iron oxides in its soil. This color may account for its association with war (and blood) in the legends of early cultures. The best resolution obtainable from telescopes on the ground is about 100 kilometers, or about the same as what we can see on the Moon with the unaided eye. At this resolution, no hint of topographic structure can be detected: no mountains, no valleys, not even impact craters. On the other hand, bright polar ice caps can be seen easily, together with dusky surface markings that sometimes change in outline and intensity from season to season.

Figure 10.3 : Mars as Seen from Earth’s Surface. These are among the best Earth-based photos of Mars, taken in 1988 when the planet was exceptionally close to Earth. The polar caps and dark surface markings are evident, but not topographic features. (credit: modification of work by Steve Larson, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona)

For a few decades around the turn of the twentieth century, some astronomers believed that they saw evidence of an intelligent civilization on Mars. The controversy began in 1877, when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910) announced that he could see long, faint, straight lines on Mars that he called canale, or channels. In English-speaking countries, the term was mistakenly translated as “canals,” implying an artificial origin.

Even before Schiaparelli’s observations, astronomers had watched the bright polar caps change size with the seasons and had seen variations in the dark surface features. With a little imagination, it was not difficult to picture the canals as long fields of crops bordering irrigation ditches that brought water from the melting polar ice to the parched deserts of the red planet. (They assumed the polar caps were composed of water ice, which isn’t exactly true, as we will see shortly.)

Until his death in 1916, the most effective proponent of intelligent life on Mars was Percival Lowell, a self-made American astronomer and member of the wealthy Lowell family of Boston (see the feature box on Percival Lowell: Dreaming of an Inhabited Mars). A skilled author and speaker, Lowell made what seemed to the public to be a convincing case for intelligent Martians, who had constructed the huge canals to preserve their civilization in the face of a deteriorating climate (Figure 10.4).

Figure 10.4 : Lowell’s Mars Globe. One of the remarkable globes of Mars prepared by Percival Lowell, showing a network of dozens of canals, oases, and triangular water reservoirs that he claimed were visible on the red planet.

The argument for a race of intelligent Martians, however, hinged on the reality of the canals, a matter that remained in serious dispute among astronomers. The canal markings were always difficult to study, glimpsed only occasionally because atmospheric conditions caused the tiny image of Mars to shimmer in the telescope. Lowell saw canals everywhere (even a few on Venus), but many other observers could not see them at all and remained unconvinced of their existence. When telescopes larger than Lowell’s failed to confirm the presence of canals, the skeptics felt vindicated. Now it is generally accepted that the straight lines were an optical illusion, the result of the human mind’s tendency to see order in random features that are glimpsed dimly at the limits of the eye’s resolution. When we see small, dim dots of surface markings, our minds tend to connect those dots into straight lines.

 

Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona

In the late 1800s, Percival Lowell was the first to seek site with good air clarity and superior seeing (steady air or lack of turbulence). After testing many different site tests, Lowell gave the lumber town of Flagstaff, AZ (population of 1,000) high marks. He selected a hill 300 feet above town and built an observatory, which is still in use today.

Lowell initiated Mars Mania; he sensationalized what he perceived as Martian canals. The canals were first described by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli during the close Martian approach in 1877. Schiaparelli gave them the Italian name ‘canali. ’ The translation was taken as canals; canals refer to something made by someone, something, but not Earth-natural…. Lowell pressed the idea that these canals were made by intelligent beings – Martians. There were books and articles that promoted the Martian canals as well as Martian seasonal vegetation growth. This, and surrounding controversy, stimulated interest in Red Planet. And in 1898, science fiction author H. G. Wells wrote “The War of the Worlds,” furthering the controversy.

Other observers also saw the Martian Canals. Lowell astronomer Earl Slipher’s book, The Photographic Story of Mars , shows adjacent direct photographs and drawings. In 1962, Slipher asked readers to judge:

History … shows that every skilled observer … has had no great difficulty of seeing and convincing himself of the reality of the canals. Photographs have recorded traces of so many of the canals and oases … that they should remove all doubt of the reality — E. C. Slipher (1962).

So what happened? Were the canals real? When spacecraft first started exploring Mars in 1965, Mariner 4, no canals were seen. It is now believed that the eye fooled the astronomer, he connected features on Mars that were there – but the canals were not. It was like connecting the dots, an optical illusion.

Lowell’s 1916 Map of Mars. The fine lines are the Martian Canals. Public Domain

Orbital Properties - need a better name

Astronomers have determined the rotation period of Mars with great accuracy by watching the motion of permanent surface markings; its sidereal day is 24 hours 37 minutes 23 seconds, just a little longer than the rotation period of Earth. This high precision is not obtained by watching Mars for a single rotation, but by noting how many turns it makes over a long period of time. Good observations of Mars date back more than 200 years, a period during which tens of thousands of martian days have passed. As a result, the rotation period can be calculated to within a few hundredths of a second.

The rotational axis of Mars has a tilt of about 25°, similar to the tilt of Earth’s axis. Thus, Mars experiences seasons very much like those on Earth. Because of the longer martian year (almost two Earth years), however, each season there lasts about six of our months.

 

Spacecraft 

Mars has been intensively investigated by spacecraft. More than 50 spacecraft have been launched toward Mars, but only about half were fully successful. The first visitor was the US Mariner 4, which flew past Mars in 1965 and transmitted 22 photos to Earth. These pictures showed an apparently bleak planet with abundant impact craters. In those days, craters were unexpected; some people who were romantically inclined still hoped to see canals or something like them. In any case, newspaper headlines sadly announced that Mars was a “dead planet.”

In 1971, NASA’s Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, mapping the entire surface of Mars at a resolution of about 1 kilometer and discovering a great variety of geological features, including volcanoes, huge canyons, intricate layers on the polar caps, and channels that appeared to have been cut by running water. Geologically, Mars didn’t look so dead after all.

The twin Viking spacecraft of the 1970s were among the most ambitious and successful of all planetary missions. Two orbiters surveyed the planet and served to relay communications for two landers on the surface. After an exciting and sometimes frustrating search for a safe landing spot, the Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold) on July 20, 1976, exactly 7 years after Neil Armstrong’s historic first step on the Moon. Two months later, Viking 2 landed with equal success in another plain farther north, called Utopia. The landers photographed the surface with high resolution and carried out complex experiments searching for evidence of life, while the orbiters provided a global perspective on Mars geology.

Mars languished unvisited for two decades after Viking. Two more spacecraft were launched toward Mars, by NASA and the Russian Space Agency, but both failed before reaching the planet.

The situation changed, beginning in the 1990s, as NASA began a new exploration program using spacecraft that were smaller and less expensive than Viking. The first of the new missions, appropriately called Pathfinder, landed the first wheeled, solar-powered rover on the martian surface on July 4, 1997 (Figure 10.14). An orbiter called Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) arrived a few months later and began high-resolution photography of the entire surface over more than one martian year. The most dramatic discovery by this spacecraft, which continued to operate until 2006, was evidence of gullies apparently cut by surface water, as we will discuss later. These missions were followed in 2003 by the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter, and the ESA Mars Express orbiter, both carrying high-resolution cameras. A gamma-ray spectrometer on Odyssey discovered a large amount of subsurface hydrogen (probably in the form of frozen water). Subsequent orbiters included the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to evaluate future landing sites, MAVEN to study the upper atmosphere, and India’s Mangalayaan, also focused on study of Mars’ thin layers of air. Several of these orbiters are also equipped to communicate with landers and rovers on the surface and serve as data relays to Earth.

Figure 10.14 : Surface View from Mars Pathfinder. The scene from the Pathfinder lander shows a windswept plain, sculpted long ago when water flowed out of the martian highlands and into the depression where the spacecraft landed. The Sojourner rover, the first wheeled vehicle on Mars, is about the size of a microwave oven. Its flat top contains solar cells that provided electricity to run the vehicle. You can see the ramp from the lander and the path the rover took to the larger rock that the mission team nicknamed “Yogi.” (credit: NASA/JPL)

In 2003, NASA began a series of highly successful Mars landers. Twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), named Spirit and Opportunity, have been successful far beyond their planned lifetimes. The design goal for the rovers was 600 meters of travel; in fact, they have traveled jointly more than 50 kilometers. After scouting around its rim, Opportunity drove down the steep walls into an impact crater called Victoria, then succeeded with some difficulty in climbing back out to resume its route (Figure 10.15). Dust covering the rovers’ solar cells caused a drop in power, but when a seasonal dust storm blew away the dust, the rovers resumed full operation. In order to survive winter, the rovers were positioned on slopes to maximize solar heating and power generation. In 2006, Spirit lost power on one of its wheels, and subsequently became stuck in the sand, where it continued operation as a fixed ground station. Meanwhile, in 2008, Phoenix (a spacecraft “reborn” of spare parts from a previous Mars mission that had failed) landed near the edge of the north polar cap, at latitude 68°, and directly measured water ice in the soil.

Figure 10.15 : Victoria Crater. (a) This crater in Meridiani Planum is 800 meters wide, making it slightly smaller than Meteor crater on Earth. Note the dune field in the interior. (b) This image shows the view from the Opportunity rover as it scouted the rim of Victoria crater looking for a safe route down into the interior. (credit a: modification of work by NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Phio State University; credit b: modification of work by NASA/JPL/Cornell)

In 2011, NASA launched its largest (and most expensive) Mars mission since Viking (see Figure 10.1). The 1-ton rover Curiosity, the size of a subcompact car, has plutonium-powered electrical generators, so that it is not dependent on sunlight for power. Curiosity made a pinpoint landing on the floor of Gale crater, a site selected for its complex geology and evidence that it had been submerged by water in the past. Previously, Mars landers had been sent to flat terrains with few hazards, as required by their lower targeting accuracy. The scientific goals of Curiosity include investigations of climate and geology, and assessment of the habitability of past and present Mars environments. In 2018, NASA’s InSight Lander touched down on Mars, carrying a suite of scientific instruments. These include a package (nicknamed “the mole”) that will dig into the surface of Mars 1 mm at a time, hoping to reach a depth of 5 meters with heat sensors. Neither of these missions carries a specific life detection instrument, however. So far, scientists have not been able to devise a simple instrument that could distinguish living from nonliving materials on Mars.

The focus on the possibility of life returned with the 2020 launch of the large rover Perseverance, the near-twin of Curiosity. It landed in a former lakebed, and part of its mission is to drill into ancient sedimentary rocks and collect small samples of these rocks to be returned (by a later mission) to Earth for laboratory study. NASA’s remarkable helicopter drone, named Ingenuity, has acted like an airborne scout for this mission.

Link to Learning

The Curiosity rover required a remarkably complex landing sequence and NASA made a video about it called “7 Minutes of Terror” that went viral on the Internet.

A dramatic video summary of the first two years of Curiosity’s exploration of the martian surface can be viewed as well.

Figure 10.32 : New Vehicles on Mars. (a) The Ingenuity Helicopter flies above the martian surface. (b) The Chinese Zhurong rover, deployed in June 2021, is next to the Tianwen-1 lander; the “group portrait” was taken by a wireless camera placed by the rover. (credit a: modification of work by NASA/JPL; credit b: modification of work by the China National Space Administration)

 

Martian Samples

Much of what we know of the Moon, including the circumstances of its origin, comes from studies of lunar samples, but spacecraft have not yet returned martian samples to Earth for laboratory analysis. It is with great interest, therefore, that scientists have discovered that samples of martian material are nevertheless already here on Earth, available for study. These are all members of a rare class of meteorites (Figure 10.16)—rocks that have fallen from space.

Figure 10.16 : Martian Meteorite. This fragment of basalt, ejected from Mars in a crater-forming impact, eventually arrived on Earth’s surface. (credit: NASA)

How would rocks have escaped from Mars? Many impacts have occurred on the red planet, as shown by its heavily cratered surface. Fragments blasted from large impacts can escape from Mars, whose surface gravity is only 38% of Earth’s. A long time later (typically a few million years), a very small fraction of these fragments collide with Earth and survive their passage through our atmosphere, just like other meteorites. (We’ll discuss meteorites in more detail in the chapter on Cosmic Samples and the Origin of the Solar System.) By the way, rocks from the Moon have also reached our planet as meteorites, although we were able to demonstrate their lunar origin only by comparison with samples returned by the Apollo missions

Most of the martian meteorites are volcanic basalts; most of them are also relatively young—about 1.3 billion years old. We know from details of their composition that they are not from Earth or the Moon. Besides, there was no volcanic activity on the Moon to form them as recently as 1.3 billion years ago. It would be very difficult for ejecta from impacts on Venus to escape through its thick atmosphere. By the process of elimination, the only reasonable origin seems to be Mars, where the Tharsis volcanoes were active at that time.

The martian origin of these meteorites was confirmed by the analysis of tiny gas bubbles trapped inside several of them. These bubbles match the atmospheric properties of Mars as first measured directly by Viking. It appears that some atmospheric gas was trapped in the rock by the shock of the impact that ejected it from Mars and started it on its way toward Earth.

One of the most exciting results from analysis of these martian samples has been the discovery of both water and organic (carbon-based) compounds in them, which suggests that Mars may once have had oceans and perhaps even life on its surface. As we have already hinted, there is other evidence for the presence of flowing water on Mars in the remote past, and even extending to the present.

In this and the following sections, we will summarize the picture of Mars as revealed by all these exploratory missions and by about 40 samples from Mars.

 

Further Exploration

In October 1938, the Mercury Theater of the Air on radio dramatized The War of the Worlds as a series of radio news reports. This broadcast scared many people into thinking that Lowell’s Martians were really invading New Jersey, and caused something of a panic. You can listen to the original radio broadcast if you scroll down to “War of the Worlds.”  

Attributions 

https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshel...an_Controversy

https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshel..._-_An_Overview

https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshel...eology_of_Mars

https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshel...tary_Evolution