Word: martian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Favorite Martian...
NASA is returning to its aviation roots. The space agency revealed its plan for Mars this week, and it features... a plane. The Martian flyover in a yet-to-be-designed unmanned plane is scheduled for 2003 -- fittingly, the 100th anniversary of the first Wright brothers flight. Symbolism aside, an unprecedented amount of Martian data will be collected. "We are entering a new phase," says TIME science writer Jeffrey Kluger, who notes that the last Pathfinder mission was the first in which the surface exploration of Mars was carried out by a moving spacecraft. The plane mission takes "such mobile...
...involving custody disputes and other family feuds). Yet to stave off this peril, we're giving kids coloring books that have the psychological impact of the 1950s movie Invaders from Mars, in which the child protagonist learns that anyone--next-door neighbors, even the police--may be a robotic Martian convert...
...point A to any cosmic point B is like leading ducks when you're hunting," says TIME senior writer Jeffrey Kluger, coauthor of the book "Apollo 13." "You can't aim for where a planet is, you have to aim for where it's going to be." With a Martian year lasting roughly two of our years, missing the rendezvous means you have a while to wait before the motion of the two bodies coincides again. "If an error of one degree magnifies to many degrees when traveling on the ocean," says Kluger, "imagine what it's like in space...
...probes, powered by batteries, should wink out within three days. The lander, with robust solar panels to keep it humming, could last three months. But even if the systems do not survive that long, their work could be profound. After all, scientists have spent years studying just the Martian skin; this will be their first chance to dig a little deeper...