Word: martianize
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...America's Mariner 9 and Russia's Mars 2, were in orbit around the Red Planet, seeking out conditions and features that might support life and radioing their findings back to earth across more than 90 million miles of space. A capsule ejected from Mars 2 lay on the Martian surface, possibly equipped with instruments that could sample the soil and the atmosphere and detect the presence of life. And a second Mars-bound Soviet spacecraft was closing in; it too was presumed to carry a capsule capable of making a soft landing...
...vanished entirely, and the surface was remarkably smooth. Said Astronomer Bradford Smith: "This whole area looks like it's been planed off." Some scientists speculated that the most logical explanation for the change was that the surface had been scoured by glaciers as the polar cap grew during Martian winters and then receded again...
...that does," he said, "is water." Mariner's instruments did detect water vapor in the atmosphere above the south polar cap, suggesting that it had risen from the ice below. Those readings encouraged scientists who still hope to find some form of ife, however rudimentary, on the desolate Martian surface...
Taking its TV eyes off the planet for a while, Mariner demonstrated its versatility-and the skill of its terrestrial controllers-by spotting and photographing the outer Martian moonlet, Deimos, from a distance of more than 5,000 miles. Deimos, a tiny chunk of debris only 5½ miles by 7 miles, seemed to be flattened in its northwest quadant, appearing to one JPL observer "like half an apple with a bite taken out of it." It also had unexplained light splotches and other surface features that may show up more clearly when JPL technicians use computers to enhance...
Mysterious Silence. Despite the storm, readings taken by Mariner's infrared spectrometer enabled JPL investigators to identify several earthlike minerals in the Martian crust, including quartz, granite and anorthocite. Those findings caused considerable excitement among the scientists. They indicated that Mars had at one point in its history undergone melting and that lighter elements had floated to the surface, later hardening into an earthlike crust. Included among the lighter elements are carbon compounds that were necessary for the development of life on earth. Said NASA Exobiologist Jerry Soffen, who is project scientist for the Viking program that will make...