The planet Mars is associated in ancient cultures with war and death, perhaps due to its color, which reminds those of imagination of the color of blood
From "Mada" - a scientific newspaper for all, volume 3 booklet number 1988, XNUMX
Published by the Weizmann Institute for Publications in Natural Sciences and Technology.
The planet Mars is associated in ancient cultures with war and death, perhaps due to its color, which reminds those with imaginations of the color of blood: the Babylonians, about 3000 years ago, called him Nargal - after their god of death and plague. The Greeks and the Romans called him, each in his own language, after the god of war Ares or Mers. Continuing this tradition, the two moons of Mars discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall were named after the horses harnessed to the chariot of the Ionian god of war: Phobos (fear) and Deimos (fear).
On 7/7/88 and 12/7/88, two Soviet spacecraft were sent from the Bikonor base in Kazakhstan, which will land on Mars at the end of January 1989. The spacecraft will conduct a comprehensive geographical survey of the planet from above their orbit, for about 120 days. In May 1989, one of the spacecraft will pass near the face of Phobos, at a height of several tens of meters, photograph its face and land two landers full of instruments on it. The spacecraft will also send a laser beam and a particle beam to the face of Phobos and will launch pigeons and mares from it to be collected and studied in the spacecraft hovering above. Depending on the results obtained, the second spacecraft will also perform identical experiments on Phobos, or will be directed to investigate Deimos in a similar manner.
In the spirit of the new policy of openness that prevails in the USSR, representatives of the Western press in general and the American press in particular, were invited to watch the delivery of the spacecraft and visit the space facilities in Bikaner. Roald Sagdeev, head of the Soviet Space Research Institute, explained to Western journalists the new policy that had already found expression in talks held in April 1987 between the American and Soviet foreign ministers, talks that ended with the signing of a 5-year cooperation contract Civilians in space exploration. In the long term, there is talk of a joint launch of a manned flight to Mars in the second decade of the next century; In the short term, for example, we are talking about installing a Soviet receiver on the American observation spacecraft that will be launched to Mars in 1992. This receiver will be able to mediate the transmission of broadcasts from balloons that will be released into the Martian atmosphere from the next Soviet spacecraft, which will be launched to the planet in 1994.
Among the Americans, many voices are heard in favor of cooperation with the Russians, such as the well-known astronomer Carl Sagan, who claims that the technological and economic advantages that will arise from this will far outweigh the disadvantages (for example, the possibility that secret information will be leaked). The tendency for cooperation found expression at the last summit conference in Moscow, where the heads of state, Reagan and Gorbachev, signed a joint statement stating that "launching spacecraft to the Moon and Mars are possible areas for inter-power and international cooperation." The candidates for the US presidency also show quite a bit of enthusiasm for the matter. One can assume that in doing so they are responding to their advisors, who are aware of the heart murmurs of the American public. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis says: "We must explore with the USSR and other nations the possibility and practicality of joint operations for space exploration, which could pave the way for a joint manned launch to Mars."
George W. Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, is seeking "a long-term commitment to manned and unmanned exploration of the solar system. There is a lot to do - further research of the moon and a mission to Mars." One can find symbolism in the fact that the cooperation between the superpowers in space exploration for peaceful purposes will be directed precisely to Mars - the star of the ancient god of war...
Opposition to manned flights
An operation to launch a man to Mars will be very expensive: according to a first estimate, about 100 billion dollars (for the sake of the Holocaust: the price of the "Apollo" project, to land a man on the moon, was about 25 billion dollars). Undoubtedly, strong opposition to the issue is expected. One of the chief opponents is the renowned physicist from the University of Iowa, James Van Allen, who in 1958 found the radiation belts around the Earth that bear his name. Not only does Shawn-Allen attack the plan for a manned flight to Mars, he also opposes all manned space programs, such as expanding the activities of the space shuttles and building a space station. Against this, he recommends diverting the huge budgets, which will be shared with the cancellation of these projects, to the construction of "smart" spacecraft, unmanned and loaded with instruments, such as the two American "Viking" spacecraft that were placed on Mars, or the Voyager spacecraft that passed by Jupiter , Saturn and Uranus. Van Allen admits that when the manned Apollo flights were sent, a legitimate "cultural goal" was achieved: "a sense of adventure shared by all of humanity." However, according to him, since the beginning of the seventies, this role played by the manned space program among the general public has been dwindling. In his opinion, this is proven by the success of science fiction films along the lines of the "Star Wars" series: in view of the enormous popularity of these films among the youth and the general public, and the paucity of the actual achievements of manned flights compared to what is shown in the films, the degree of effectiveness and the attractiveness of these achievements are weakened : They can no longer serve as a factor that arouses the feeling of excitement in adventure and human partnership. This nullified the unique achievement of manned space flights.
Interesting planet
This is Van Allen's opinion and it is impossible not to give weight to it. The economic and industrial elements in the US, who are interested in the manned space programs for their huge budgets, know that without a sympathetic public opinion, the budgets necessary for its realization will not be approved. Mars is a very "attractive" planet in terms of harnessing public opinion to support the matter: since the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli discovered in 1877 the "canals" on the surface of Mars, he has not stopped
The trick to ignite the imagination of mankind. The important American astronomer Percival Lowell saw them, at the beginning of our century, as a network of canals spread over its surface and carrying irrigation water from the poles. Only in 1969 did they prove it
A mariner who has absolutely nothing in these canals.
But Mars still continues to excite: its temperature is not "terrible" (on average about 63 degrees Celsius below zero) and its atmosphere contains gases necessary for life (about 95% carbon dioxide, about 2% nitrogen, and even traces of oxygen and water vapor water). With the exception of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, Mars is the only celestial body in the solar system that has any probability - however low - of the existence of life of the form we know, on its surface. The biological laboratories of the two "Viking" spacecraft, which landed on its surface in 1976, found no evidence of the existence of life
on the piece of land next to where they landed. But we cannot rule out the possibility that there is life in other areas on its surface. Even if life forms are not found in the future, there is talk of the possibility of testing in laboratories on Earth Martian rocks brought by astronauts, to try and find large or microscopic fossils, from a time when life may have existed on it. There is a special justification for testing the possibility of the existence of fossils: according to the route of the channels and veins that stretch across the surface of Mars, the researchers are sure that in the past large amounts of water flowed on the planet.
Bringing back the adventure dimension
Public interest can also be aroused by the renewed publications about the discovery of a kind of "face" on the surface of Mars. In 1976, when the Viking spacecraft passed over the Cydonia region in the northern hemisphere of Mars, it took quite puzzling pictures: a number of bodies arranged in a circle and between them a pentagonal pyramid (photo 1). Nearby, a little higher to the right of the pyramid, stands a "structure" about 2 km in size, with straight walls, and inside it a strange body in the shape of a trapezoid (photo 2). In the upper right part of photo 1 there is a face-like hill about a kilometer and a half in size. At a higher magnification, beautiful "Hellenic" faces are visible (photo 3), reminiscent of the faces of Ionian statues from the Archaic period (photo 4).
For about 12 years, since the photos were taken until today, most scientists treated them as just an anecdote. However, in an article published in May by Mark Carlotto, a computer expert from Massachusetts, in the important newspaper "Useful Optics", he presents the results of sophisticated computer analyzes he conducted on these images. You can see in the photos that he received the second eye socket (in the original photos half of the face was shaded), "teeth" marks in the mouth and two diagonal straight lines crossing the forehead (photo 5). Carloto took the digital data characterizing each and every point in the image, and "changed" the lighting direction and the photography angle in computer simulations (photo 6). According to him, the topography of the surface in the different situations indicates that these are indeed real land routes and not accidental shading. Carloto claims that even though it is not possible to reach a firm conclusion, it is possible that the features of the described landscape "are not natural".
The Soviet spacecraft that will orbit Mars will repeatedly photograph its face. But it is doubtful whether satellite photographs or an unmanned lander will be able to reach a definite conclusion. Just like the people who aspire to bring Martian rocks to Israel for the purpose of examining fossils, there will be those who want to land "astroarchaeologists" on it. This is for the purpose of a thorough examination of the area that meets the kind of heart's desires that gave Erich von Däniken's books their dizzying success. In the hands of the lobbyists of the manned space programs was added a starscape that could attract the sympathy of a wide public and restore the dimension of adventure to space exploration.
