Word: planet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...study of Mars. By 1908, influenced in part by optical illusions and wishful thinking, Lowell had counted and named hundreds of canals, which he believed were part of a large network conveying water from the polar ice caps to the parched cities of an arid and dying planet. Lowell's observations and musings, in turn, inspired British novelist H.G. Wells to write The War of the Worlds, a dramatic account of an invasion of the earth by octopus-like Martians. In 1938 a radio adaptation of that novel by another man named Welles -- Orson, that is -- panicked many Americans...
Finally, in 1965, the triumphant mission of the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 brought some reality to musings about Mars. The craft flew past the planet at a distance of only 6,100 miles, transmitting 22 television pictures of a bleak, moonlike landscape, pockmarked by craters and showing no signs of life. Even so, hope persisted. To demonstrate that a Mariner flyby at a distance of thousands of miles might completely overlook a thriving civilization, a young and still unknown Carl Sagan that same year sifted through a thousand pictures of earth shot by a weather satellite orbiting only 300 miles...
When Mariner 9 was successfully inserted into low orbit around Mars in 1971, a planet-wide dust storm obscured its vision for six weeks. After the dust settled, Mariner's cameras revealed a fascinating landscape: towering volcanoes, great canyons, lava flows and a multitude of craters in the red- hued plains. What excited scientists and Mars buffs the most, however, was the unmistakable traces of dry riverbeds and deltas etched into the rock, evidence that water had once flowed freely on the Martian surface. Had life evolved on Mars while water was still ample? And might living organisms still exist...
...these reasons alone, Mars enthusiasts say, further exploration of the Red Planet, both unmanned and manned, is scientifically justified. "There is a growing sense of purpose being attached to a manned flight to Mars, both in the Soviet Union and the U.S.," says Vyacheslav Balebanov, a deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Like most of his counterparts in the U.S., he would prefer a measured, logical, step-by- step program to a more hazardous, hastily mounted manned mission. "We must start to explore Mars in detail before such a flight is possible...
...crew would have to remain on Mars for more than a year -- increasing the mission length to what now seems an unbearably long 1,100 days. But with the expenditure of more fuel, the explorers could blast off earlier, head toward Venus and loop around it, using the planet's gravity to whip their craft toward earth at a higher speed. That would cut the mission time to 600 to 700 days...