CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuter) -- Twenty years after sending probes
to Mars, NASA is preparing a return to the Red Planet, but, if life
exists there, do not expect to see aliens like those depicted in the
smash hit movie "Independence Day."
The first of two Viking probes touched down 20 years ago on Saturday
but failed to conclusively answer if life in any form existed on Mars.
But this week, as the U.S. space agency was commemorating the
anniversary, it was preparing to dispatch a small armada of spacecraft
to learn more about the planet and perhaps shed some light on the
question of the existence of life on this planet that has fascinated
science fiction buffs for most of the 20th century.
Earthlings, however, should not be overly concerned about the prospect
of an attack by Martian spaceships with laser or atomic weapons.
"When we talk about life we're not even talking about lizards,
salamanders or worms," said Wayne Lee, mission planner for Mars
Operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California. "We'd probably be talking about simple bacteria and
microbes, if it existed at all."
Life would face a struggle on the surface of Mars, where surface
temperatures average -81 degrees F and liquid water would boil away in
the planet's low air pressure.
Things may have been different about a billion years ago, as pictures
have revealed channels cut into the planet's surface by torrents of
running water. What happened to that water remains a mystery.
NASA's exploration of Mars suffered a devastating blow in 1993 when
the $1 billion Mars Observer, the first spacecraft sent to Mars since
the 1976 Vikings, was lost days before it was due to arrive at the
planet.
That disaster and budget cutbacks led NASA to take a different tack to
Mars exploration this time.
"We have since realized that it is not a good strategy to put all our
eggs in one basket. Instead, we can use the same amount of money to
fly more missions, but smaller and at a cheaper cost, and if one of
them goes down the tubes it does not destroy the entire program," Lee
said.
Three years after NASA's Mars program seemed lost in space, two new
smaller spacecraft are being readied for the journey to the Red
Planet.
Mars Global Surveyor, scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral in
November, will carry identical copies of five of the seven scientific
instruments on Mars Observer. From 228 miles up it will be able to
photograph objects on the Martian surface as small as a compact car.
Mars Pathfinder, consisting of a lander and a mini-rover, will follow
in December. If all goes well, the spacecraft will enter Mars'
atmosphere at 17,000 mph next July.
Parachutes will slow it to about 30 mph and giant air bags will
cushion its landing on an ancient flood plain.
The sides of the pyramid-shaped lander will then open like flower
petals, revealing a weather station and freeing a remote-controlled
rover to explore the surrounding area.
The rover, about the size of a laser printer, will roam from its base
beaming back video and determining the composition of rocks with an
'electronic tongue'.
The two spacecraft each cost about $150 million, plus $65 million for
each of the Delta 2 rockets that will send them on their way. By
comparison, the two Viking spacecraft would have a combined price tag
of $2.5 billion in 1996 dollars.
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