Mars has held the fascination of humans since the dawn of history. In modern times, a series of robotic probes has unlocked much of the Red Planet's secrets. But, sooner or later, human explorers will voyage to Mars, perhaps to uncover the secrets of extraterristrial life. Mars may also become the home of a new branch of human civilization, as settlers terraform the planet to return it to its prehistoric state with a breathable atmosphere, rivers and oceans, and life blooming again.
Mars and Human History
Humans have known and have been fascinated by Mars since
before recorded history. Thirty six
centuries ago, the ancient Babylonians noted Mars’s apparent looping motion
across the sky and its changing brightness. In ancient India,
Mars appeared to be a fire in the sky. The Greeks and Romans considered the
planet the personification of their god of war because of its red color.
In 1609, Johannes Kepler discovered a way to accurately
predict the motion of Mars across the sky by concluding that Mars was a world
that moves around the sun in a ellipse rather than a circle as Copernicus
suggested. Galileo proved that Mars was an actual world by showing it in his
telescope for the first time.
As telescopes improved, astronomers could see polar icecaps,
clouds, haze, and shifting color patterns on the Martian surface, all which
suggested a habitable world. In 1877 an Italian astronomer named Giovanni
Schiaparelli thought he saw thin lines across the Martian landscape that he
called “canali” (Italian for “channels”). This name was mistranslated to mean
“canals,” which suggested intelligent life on Mars. In the United
States, Percival Lowell seized on the canals
as proof of a Martian civilization, advanced enough to move water across a
whole world.
The modern era of Mars exploration began to take shape in
the early 1960s, even as the race to put the first man on the Moon was
occurring. This era has, so far, consisted of a series of robotic probes
launched, primarily, by the United States.
Mariner 4
Mariner 4 was launched by NASA in November of 1964. On July 15th, 1965 it passed by Mars
successfully at 9,846 km, returning visual and other data from the red planet.
The images beamed back to Earth showed a crater strewn surface much like that of
the Moon. No canals or any signs of life, intelligent or otherwise, were found.
Mariner 4’s instruments proved that the atmosphere of Mars was about .07
percent as thick as that of Earth, too thin to support life as we know it.