Word: soiling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even proponents believe the U.S. should approach a joint effort with the Soviets in gradual steps, perhaps starting with an unmanned mission to bring back soil samples from Mars in 1998. Many, like Sagan, are convinced that the advantages of a cooperative mission would override the possible risks. Besides sharply reducing the enormous costs of going to Mars alone, such a venture, says Sagan, "would revitalize a dispirited and unraveling NASA" and provide a "coherent focus for the U.S. space program...
...surface, the landers began providing the most accurate measurements yet of Martian surface temperatures, atmospheric density and wind velocity, while the cameras shot more than 4,500 spectacular close-up pictures of the surrounding, rock- strewn landscape. Each lander was also equipped with an arm that scooped up soil samples and fed them to a little onboard biological laboratory, where they were analyzed for any signs of metabolic activity, which would signify life...
...first soil sample briefly breathed new life into the Mars mystique. After being moistened inside the lab, it suddenly released an unexpectedly high burst of oxygen, setting off a flurry of speculation among scientists on earth. Did the oxygen come from some tiny form of Martian life in the soil? After further tests failed to confirm those first results, scientists reluctantly concluded that the large amount of oxygen had probably been produced by a simple chemical reaction between water vapor and some unidentified oxygen-rich compound in the soil sample...
Some scientists, Soviet and American alike, have still not abandoned hope of finding life or its remnants deeper in the Martian soil. There life forms might have access to water and be protected from the fierce solar ultraviolet radiation that rains down on the surface, virtually unobstructed by the Martian atmosphere. Sedimentary rocks in the ancient riverbeds would be an ideal place to hunt for fossils of organisms that may have lived when Mars was more benign, with a thicker atmosphere, warmer climate and running water on its surface...
...West. Much of the territory of the Western states, from Texas to California, was held first by Spain, then Mexico. The Spanish names of many Western cities -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe -- bear witness to the settlements of the early Franciscan friars. The first play on American soil was performed by Spanish colonists in New Mexico in 1598. Yet in the hills of New Mexico and the old mission towns of the Pacific Coast, the descendants of Spanish settlers who greeted the Anglo pioneers are amused (and sometimes not amused) to find themselves perennially arriving in the national consciousness...