Mars - A Mere 43 Million Miles...

[Devious Viper]

This weekend we will have one of our periodic opportunities to see the fourth planet in all its glory. The celestial clockwork that governs the motions of the planets will bring Earth and Mars unusually close - closer than the two planets will be again until 2018. In the early hours of Sunday morning (GMT) we will be 'only' 43 million miles apart.

Mars has always been an object of fascination for us earthlings; apart from its vivid red colour, the quality that makes Mars unique is that it is the only planet whose surface we can see clearly with telescopes on Earth. Mercury is too small, distant and bathed by the glare of the Sun. Venus is covered with impenetrable clouds, and the great planets - Jupiter and the rest - do not have solid surfaces. But Mars, which has a thin, clear atmosphere, is readily observed.

At its poles can be seen the two vast Martian icecaps. The surface of the planet consists of a harsh, inhospitable landscape of mountains and craters, vast lava plains and huge canyons the size of the USA. It has a volcano bigger than Texas and cliffs three miles high.

In the 1960's, NASAs chief scientist Werner Von Braun thought that man would land on Mars by 1985. But it has always been deemed too expensive. Now, however, NASA has formed plans for a return to the Moon some time in the next decade and probably Mars in the decade after that. Mars is actually more hospitable than the Moon; it will almost certainly one day be 'colonised' if only by scientists, and NASA will probably lead the way.

In the 19th century, Americans talked of their 'manifest destiny' to push their new nation from sea to shining sea. As the pioneers went west, they found a harsh, red landscape of mesas and buttes, clear blue skies and rolling sand dunes.

The new pioneers, if it is decided that Man's manifest destiny is to cross the oceans of space, will find much the same when they arrive on Mars.


(Michael Hanlon, 'The Real Mars'. Review here)