It’s this chemistry lab right in the belly of the rover that makes the mission really special. ibid.
Mars. The Red Planet. We’ve long wondered if it’s harboured life. Some have dreamt of walking on the surface. More than four decades after they landed on the moon Nasa is now imagining a two-year ride across Space to Mars. To do it they need new rockets on a new scale. Horizon: Man on Mars: Mission to the Red Planet BBC 2014
There’s an even bigger problem: another source of radiation that’s even more damaging: Galactic Cosmic Rays. Galactic Cosmic Rays are high-energy particles spewed out from supernovae. ibid.
Travelling over eight months across fifty-six million kilometres of space we’re finally arriving at the planet Mars. Now comes the greatest engineering challenge of the whole mission – landing. ibid.
Mars’ astronauts will be expected to stay for a whole year before the planets line up for them to take the shortest journey back to Earth. ibid.
Space suits have changed little since the Apollo days. ibid.
There’s rather more uncertainty about their homecoming. ibid.
Mars. The Red Planet. Many scientists believe that the first person to step foot on its surface is alive today. Horizon: Mars: A Traveller’s Guide, BBC 2017
Earth-Mars distance: 555 to 378 million km, radius 3396 km, surface gravity 0.386, average surface temperature minus 63 degrees to minus 81 degrees F.’ ibid.
The red glow of Mars is an omnipresent feature of our night skies. ibid.
‘I think it is irrefutable that there was once water flowing at the surface on Mars.’ ibid. scientist
The southern polar cap is a freezing vision of swirling white on an otherwise rust-coloured planet. ibid.
Is there life beyond Earth? The answer could be waiting on the planet next door. Mars may be our best hope for resolving the mystery of creation. Mars has more in common with our world than any planet we know of in the universe. But it’s still millions of kilometres away. Nova: Is There Life on Mars? PBS 2008
Robots: Mars today is a busy place. Three satellites are in orbit and three landers on its surface. ibid.
Mars had had a turbulent past. ibid.
There have been over forty attempted missions to Mars. Most unsuccessful. ibid.
Not only did Viking find no life but no water either. Mars was pronounced a wasteland. ibid.
In 1996 Nasa scientists unveiled a Martian rock – a meteorite that had landed in Antarctica. ibid.
Water was once here. ibid.
The soil turns out to be 90% silica. ibid.
Could have been up to a thousand times saltier than Earth’s oceans. What made the waters of Mars turn to poison? ibid.
Unlike Earth, Mars today has countless small magnetic fields pockmarking its surface. ibid.
The north is much less weathered than the south. ibid.
Phoenix has landed in the right place ... For the first time we have touched water [ice] on another planet. ibid.
It’s not acidic – a reading of 8.3. ibid.
Salt content in the sample – it’s unexpectedly low, another plus for life. ibid.
We’ve just had some amazing photographs sent back by the American probe to Mars – Mariner 6. And just look at that! Craters on Mars very similar to the moon. Patrick Moore
I believe that before Apollo celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its landing on the moon the American flag should be planted on Mars. George H W Bush
I’m afraid it’s a bit disappointing but it’s not the end of the world. Please don’t go away from here believing that we have lost this spacecraft. Professor Colin Pillinger, director Beagle 2 mission, Christmas 2003
It looks after all as if the Beagle may have crash-landed. BBC News January 2004
Now it’s a mistake many of us have made but most of us are not in charge of missions into space. Scientists at NASA couldn’t work out why the Mars orbiter, worth a cool £78 million, got lost in space. Until someone pointed out that they’d planned everything in feet and inches rather than meters and centimetres. BBC News, reporting fate of Observer mission to Mars
American space agency NASA is on the verge of having to admit to another embarrassing failure. The Mars Polar lander ... the second spacecraft that it’s lost in just two months. And there’s still no convincing explanation of what might have gone wrong. BBC News
So far no signs of aliens. But in 1976 they were looking for signs of tiny bacteria; instead they found this – this photo of the Plain of Cydonia shows what most astronomers are convinced are some large rocks ... Pyramids on Mars were spooky enough but then things got really out of hand when NASA released another batch of photographs from the Plain of Cydonia. And near the pyramid shapes was something else – a rocky outcrop that some people felt had an eerie resemblance to something familiar, something that ancient astronaut-believers had long connected with aliens ... To the scientists though it was just a natural feature ... The common sense explanation is simple: human beings are just hardwired to recognise faces even when faces aren’t there. The World’s Strangest UFO Stories: Did Aliens Build the Pyramids? Discovery 2006
Close up pictures of the red planet have revealed tantalising evidence that water once flowed across the surface of Mars. Universe: Life
On August 7th 1996 NASA called an unprecedented news conference. These scientists had examined a meteorite that had come from Mars and had discovered something very strange lurking inside. ibid.
It takes its name from the Roman god of war. A distant rusty orb in the night sky. A source of rampant speculation for centuries. The Universe s1e2: Mars the Red Planet, History 2007
Scientists today think that Mars was once warm enough for large amounts of liquid water to float across its surface. ibid.
Water ice hidden from view appears to radiate out hundreds of miles in all directions from the poles. ibid.
Mars: the fourth planet from the sun. It’s about half the size of Earth. And at the closest it’s roughly thirty-five million miles away. The ancient Romans associated its red colour with hostility and named it after their god of war. The Universe s2e13: Colonising Space
Getting there will be as challenging as living there. Surviving the journey will be the ultimate test of human endurance. ibid.
New hardware for Mars will also include Orion, the crew vehicle. Orion will be more than two and a half times the volume of the Apollo capsule. On its mission to Mars, Orion will dock with the Lunar lander, sent into space on a separate launch. ibid.
Missions to Mars also face danger from solar storms; high-energy particle bursts unleashed from the sun could eliminate the crew if they are not prepared for the onslaught. The journey alone will make Mars an unprecedented challenge. With the enormous risks come historic rewards. ibid.
They are called dust devils. And they are Mars’s answer to a planetary tornado. The Universe s2e15: Wildest Weather in the Cosmos
Olympus Mons: the largest volcano in the Solar System. As we approach planet Mars we immediately catch sight of this enormous mountain. The Universe s5e1: Seven Wonders of the Solar System
Is the volcanic beast really dead, or merely a sleeping giant? ibid.
Where are the Martians? On the red planet’s poisoned-packed surface or in newly found sources of water? Did Martian life survive an apocalyptic attack? Are Martians microbial or monstrous? The Universe s5e2: Mars: The New Evidence
Dry lightning could have helped jump-start life on Mars. But it could also kill any chance of life at all. Life-giving jump-cable or fatal electric shock? ibid.
It now seems there’s about a hundred time as much H2O in Mars’s polar ice-caps than all five of America’s great lakes. ibid.
Whether there’s liquid water on Mars – that is the question. ibid.
Phoenix was to search for frozen water under the surface. ibid.
Although the droplets on its leg remain a mystery, when Phoenix’s robot arm dug a few centimetres under the Martian surface it confirmed a prediction: it hit hard icy soil containing frozen water. ibid.