Word: martian
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...looked dead indeed. Because they saw no signs of erosion, space specialists from Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, who had directed the Mariner voyage, concluded that Mars probably never had any significant amount of life-supporting water. Though they were not quite ready to deny the possibility of Martian life, the JPL men seemed all but certain that what they could not see was not there...
...Martian Chronicle...
When the full set of Martian pictures taken by the spaceship Mariner IV was released last week, Mariner's earth-bound master, Physicist William H. Pickering, had the White House itself as his gallery. President Johnson was on hand to present awards to Pickering and two other Mariner scientists.* For cautious experts, the best of the photographs neither proved nor precluded the possible existence of life on Mars, although the planet's rugged terrain seemed hardly hospitable enough for the hardiest of bacteria. The pictures were clearer and sharper than anyone had expected. At least one of them...
...judging by what is already known of the moon's face, must be ancient-perhaps 2 billion to 5 billion years old-and well preserved. Scientists infer that Mars has never had a significant amount of water or an atmosphere denser than it is now, or else the Martian surface would show more signs of erosion. - There were no signs of the vaunted canals, and no Earthlike features such as mountain chains, great valleys or ocean basins...
Mars may not look much like Earth; the pictures are, in fact, testimony to the uniqueness of Earth in the solar system. But Mars could still hold some of the secrets of Earth's evolution. "If the Martian surface is truly in its primitive form," said Dr. Leighton, "that surface may prove to be the best-perhaps the only-place in the solar system still preserving clues to original organic development, traces of which have long since disappeared from Earth...