Sleepy History - The Mars Missions: Could There Be Life on the Red Planet?

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

✨Sleepy History is written and narrated by humans. ✨ Narrated By: Simon Mattacks Written By: Laila Weir From Spirit and Opportunity to Mangalyaan and Nozomi, explore the story of the international effort to study the red planet, and why we are so curious about our neighbor in the solar system. Includes mentions of: Outer Space, Flying, Heights Science & Nature, Scientific Experiments #History #Sleep #science #Mars #space #experiments About Sleepy History Explore history's most intriguing stories, people, places, events, and mysteries, delivered in a supremely calming atmosphere. If you struggle to fall asleep and you have a curious mind, Sleepy History is the perfect bedtime companion. Our stories will gently grasp your attention, pulling your mind away from any racing thoughts, making room for the soothing music and calming narration to guide you into a peaceful sleep. Want to enjoy Sleepy History ad-free? Start your 7-day free trial of Sleepy History Premium: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sleepyhistory.supercast.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have feedback or an episode request? Let us know at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠slumberstudios.com/contact⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sleepy History is a production of Slumber Studios. To learn more, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.slumberstudios.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Few heavenly bodies have captured the public imagination like Mars. From science fiction to science fact, the red planet and the possibility of its harboring life

have enthralled countless generations. In recent years, after millennia of wonder, people are finally probing the secrets of that distant globe. There are intriguing signs that life could have existed there in the distant past, and that the planet could conceivably support human visitors in the future. Tonight, we'll trace the history of humankind's quest to crack the mysteries of the red planet. It's a story of curiosity and opportunity, of ingenuity, and perhaps above all, of perseverance. So just relax and let your mind drift as we explore the sleepy history. of the Mars missions.

For millennia, Mars has fascinated humankind. There are written observations of the planet dating back at least 4,000 years. And people surely were watching and wondering about it, long before that. Since early times, people have been driven to try to understand the cosmos. But for most of human history,

speculation and myth had to fill the gaps, that scientific limitations left to the imagination. Many ancient peoples compiled extensive observations of heavenly bodies and impressive knowledge of their movements and features. But they were limited to what they could observe by gazing at the night sky from the surface of our planet. In modern times, though, science has progressed at what feels like lightning speed. After hundreds of thousands of years observing the universe from Earth,

humanity has leapt in a dizzingly short time to exploring space. And quite soon, after the dawn of the space age, scientists were landing probes on Mars. Within a lifetime of the spread of the first automobiles on Earth, we had robotic vehicles exploring the marshes. landscape. Now, rovers, which are rugged vehicles, equipped with mobile science labs, wander its surface, while older, defunct vehicles and landing probes lay immobile in the planet's craggy deserts. Far above, uncrewed spacecraft orbit the planet, sending photos and information

back to earthly observers. While no human has yet to set foot on Mars, these robotic envoys roam its surface and circle its atmosphere, gathering data and transmitting it back to Earth. For now, Mars is, to quote NASA, the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots. But why is it that Mars exerts such fascination in the common imagination and the scientific community alike? To begin with, Mars is one of the particularly noticeable objects in the night sky. Its position in the solar system, not too far from Earth, but outside Earth's orbit, makes it relatively bright. Its reddish colour also makes it stand out. What's more, observers since ancient times were intrigued by the planets seemingly erratic,

motion. It sometimes traveled across the sky in the same direction as the sun and stars, while at other times it reversed and went in the opposite direction. Back then, people didn't have access to our modern knowledge and understanding of the solar system of planets versus the distant stars. Think about it. When you look up at night, the planets we can see look pretty much like the stars, just maybe a bit brighter and be. a smidgen bigger in some cases. Only our moon and sun look like different types of objects altogether. So to early people, without the benefit of telescopes, Mars was just another heavenly body, but one that behaved very oddly. This made it an enigma, a mystery, and people have always

loved a good mystery. Mars has also exerted a new kind of fascination since the development of telescope, enables closer and more detailed observations of it. In science fiction imaginings about aliens and little green men, we speak of Martians, as opposed to say Venusians or Mercurians. Similarly, space agencies have sent robotic missions to land and search for life on Mars, not on Venus or Mercury. All this is related to the fact that Mars is the most similar to Earth of all of all of the to Earth of all the planets in our solar system. Like our planet, it has solid ground, with hills

and valleys, rocks and sand. It has an atmosphere, with clouds, winds and seasonal weather patterns. It has polar ice caps, volcanoes, and other resemblances to Earth. It even has a 24-hour day, more or less. The similar geologic and atmospheric conditions make Mars the most likely planet to harbor alien life, scientists have surmised, and also the most likely candidate for potential human colonization. Scientists considering the possibility of extraterrestrial life have assumed that any alien life forms would require similar conditions to known life on our planet. That means, for example, that alien life would require water, along with certain key elements present on Earth. That may seem like a big assumption in the vast unknown of the cosmos,

but it has been considered the best scientific starting point based on the existing information. It certainly seems a good bet at any rate that the most Earth-like planet could be the most likely to produce life forms that at least vaguely resemble terrestrial life. And indeed, the search for any signs of living things on Mars, past or present, has been a big focus of Martian exploration. Another open question has been how hospitable the Red Planet might be to human visitors. To begin with, this would mean sending astronauts to study Mars in person someday. But many people have envisioned something more than temporary visits from explorers. They see Mars as a possible future home, if or when humankind expands beyond our birth planet.

To understand the possible future of Mars exploration, though, we must first understand its past. Let's begin with the name of the planet itself, which is intricately linked to early written observations of it. Ancient civilizations originating in the Middle East, in an area of the world. then known as Mesopotamia, with the first human societies to develop writing, at least that have been discovered so far. From the dawn of recorded civilization in Mesopotamia, ancient societies left behind detailed records of their astronomical observations. Their writings show that they associated heavenly bodies with gods and mythological heroes. And these are the same. ancients connected the enigmatic red planet with their god of war.

In some of humanity's earliest writings, the ancient Babylonians called the planet Nurgar, their war god, who could also be known as Ere or Ere. Later, the ancient Greeks called their war god and the red planet by a similar name, Ares. The ancient Persians, meanwhile, called called the planet and the deity of war, Palavani Sipha. To the Egyptians, it was Hamakis, to the Norse Tui, and to the Romans, their version of the god was called Mars, the name English speakers know the planet by to this day. The name Planets also comes from ancient times.

Its origin is a Greek word meaning wanderer, a reference to the planet's seemingly irregular movement compared to the stars. Ancient astronomers in Babylonia, China, Egypt, Greece, and many other places, developed extensive knowledge about the positions and movements of celestial objects, including Mars. Some ancient knowledge and understanding has likely been lost across the millennia, like so many written records that have crumbled, burned or been buried. And we know that some ancient philosophers accurately deduced the relative movement of the planets, Earth and our sun. Nevertheless, the written record shows that planetary wandering remained mysterious to most thinkers around the world

until a few centuries ago, in the 1500s and 1600s. That's when the European scientific community began to accept the idea that the planets revolved around the sun, not the Earth. At the start of the 1600s, German astronomer Johannes Kepler began to deduce Mars's laws of motion from a careful study of its travels across the sky. It was a time of great scientific enthusiasm and discovery in that part of the world. And within a few years, the dawn of telescopes enabled newly detailed observations of Mars.

In 1610, Italian Galileo Galilei looked at the planet through a telescope for the first time. Soon, scientists were able to make drawings of the planet's surface and to note specific features like its polar caps that had previously been unseeable. Observers figured out the planet's rotation and began to study its atmosphere and seasons. Over the following centuries, astronomers kept their telescopes frequently trained on the red planet, making many more. discoveries. In 1877, for example, a watcher at the US Naval Observatory spotted two moons circling Mars. Also, in the 1800s, astronomers in Germany and Italy began to produce maps of the planet, documenting its features as observed through telescopes. One of these features in particular, provoked great interest and in many ways launched the modern era of Mars Viva.

There was a series of intersecting lines on the Martian surface, something an observer in Italy named Canali, Italian for channels or canals. These apparent canals on the planet fueled speculation that they were built by intelligent life forms. Astronomers observed and mapped these so-called canals for many years. But to the disappointment of many, later examination through better telescopes, and finally via images sent back from spaceships, would show the canals to have been an illusion. Nevertheless, scientists became interested in a different search for life on Mars.

While they dismissed the likelihood of sentient beings on the red planet, they began hunting for another form of life, microbes. From the dawn of the space age in the middle of the 20th century, Mars was a major focus for both the United States and the Soviet Union's space programs. And searching for signs of life was a key area of interest. This led mission planners to look for water as a probable prerequisite for current or past microbial life. The Soviet space program was the first to launch probes to study the Red Planet, starting in 1960. But at the beginning, all its probes failed during or soon after launch.

Then, at the end of 1962, the Soviets launched another probe towards the towards Mars, this time successfully. Known as Mars 1 or Sputnik 23, the craft was designed to fly by Mars and send back photos of the planet, along with data on its magnetic field, atmosphere and radiation. It was also equipped to identify

possible organic compounds, compounds that are essential to life as we know it. as we know it. The Soviet probe made it out of Earth's gravity and on its way towards Mars, pioneering interplanetary space travel. Tantalizingly, it returned data about space as it traveled towards the red planet, sending 61 radio transmissions back to Earth. But then, in March which 1963, disaster struck. When the craft was some 66 million miles from Earth, and at last, nearing its destination, it went silent. The probe's signal was gone. A few months later, it flew near Mars, but with communication lost, its observations were inaccessible. It must have been

a heartbreaking disappointment. But space scientists persevered. And in 1964, the Soviets launched another spacecraft that also made it to Mars, only to once again lose communication with the probe before its arrival. But that year would see the launch of the first successful mission to Mars, or be it from the US, not the Soviet program. Because that's when the US space program joined the race to the red planet. NASA launched two spacecraft designed to fly by Mars, like the silenced Soviet missions and return photos and scientific observations. One of them would succeed.

The ships named Mariner 3 and Mariner 4 launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in 1964. They ran on solar power and weighed £5.75 each. They were outfitted with imaging systems and an array of rather science fiction-sounding instruments. These were a cosmic dust detector and cosmic ray telescope, an ionization chamber, a helium magnetometer, a trapped radiation detector, and something called a solar plasma probe. The first craft failed and was lost during launch. The second, Mariner 4, made it to Mars after an eight-month journey, arriving in July. 1965. Mariner 4 recorded the first ever close-up pictures of the planet. These gave humanity a detailed peak at the Martian surface, revealing stunning extraterrestrial views, like huge

craters glazed with frost. It was a turning point in the study of Mars. Over the following years, many more spacecraft would leave Earth, headed for the red planet. Many would fail, but many others would make it, building scientific knowledge and revealing astonishing findings, the true significance of which is still being explored. A few years after Mariner 4's pioneering flight, the U.S. sent two more missions, called Mariner 6 and Mariner 7. Around the same time, the Soviet Union covertly sent more ships towards Mars too, but these all exploded during or after launch. Both Mariner 6 and 7 made it, however, and successfully flew by Mars during the summer of 1969. As the summer of love swept across America, the distant spaceships soared over the Martian equator and its South Pole.

sending back hundreds of pictures. They also recorded data about the planet's surface and atmosphere. The Mariner 6 and 7 observations confirmed, once and for all, that there were not, in fact, canals, as those 19th century astronomers had speculated. But as the door closed on the canal theories, other avenues of discovery opened up. In 1971, the US and the Soviet Union sent another flurry of spacecraft towards the red planet. Together, these would push Mars exploration to a new level. First, NASA launched its final mariner ships, Mariner 8 and 9.

This time, the craft were designed not just to fly by Mars, but to enter orbit around. it. Again, one of the spacecraft malfunctioned soon after launch, but the other Mariner 9 got to Mars and became the first human-made object ever to orbit the planet. This was a major step forward in studying Mars, but observers had to wait a bit longer to take advantage of it. That's because the planet was in the midst of a massive dust storm when Mariner 9 arrived. Mission controllers had to delay the craft's planned photography of the surface until the dust settled. The huge storm went on for a month. It must have felt interminable to the eager watchers, but at last the storm subsided.

The spaceship could begin transmitting its long-awaited photos of the red planet. These revealed extraordinary new features that had been missed by the earlier fly-by missions. Mariner 9 photographed huge volcanoes and an enormous Grand Canyon that was some 3,000 miles long. It also captured images of scars on the dry and dusty Martian surface, which seemed to be ancient riverbeds. This was an exciting sign of the past presence of water, which scientists considered so pivotal to the possibility of life. Mariner 9 remained in orbit around Mars for a year, recording pictures of the entire surface of the planet, as well as its two small moons. Meanwhile, the Soviet space program had also launched two craft towards the red planet at around the same time. designated Mars 2 and 3.

The Soviet ships were also designed to orbit Mars, like the US craft, but their mission went even a step further. They were programmed to land probes on the planet's surface. The first craft's probe crashed on impact, but the second probe landed successfully on December 2nd, 17, 1971. Unfortunately, the Soviet ships had arrived during the same enormous dust storm that delayed NASA's photography. The Soviet landing probe transmitted from the stormy planet for approximately 20 seconds. Then it failed for unknown reasons, possibly blown over in the dusty wind. That wasn't an impressive

amount of time to transmit, perhaps, but nonetheless a barrier had been broken. The direct exploration of the Martian surface had begun. Far above, the Soviet Mars 2 and 3 spaceships fared better than their landing probes. Both ships successfully entered orbit, and one of them would go on to circle Mars 362 times. Together, Mars 2 and 3602 times. Together, Mars 2 and 3rd 3, sent 60 images of Mars back to Soviet scientists. They also returned data about Martian gravity, magnetic fields, and temperatures, which ranged from freezing to cool by earthly standards. After that, the Soviets again launched a volley of craft towards Mars in July and August of 1973. But all were plagued with major problems, attributed to the

to cost-cutting in their manufacture. To save money, the Soviet space program had used aluminium instead of gold in the ship's transistors. This didn't survive the spaceflight, as well as gold would have done. Still, one of the spacecraft, Mars 6, had partial success. It reached the planet and sent a probe down to the surface in March 1974. The landing probe transmitted 224 seconds of data before losing contact, possibly when it hit the planet. Sadly, flaws in the system meant much of the data couldn't be read.

The next year, though, saw more progress in Mars landings, now from the US program. In July and September of 1976, the bicentennial of the United States, NASA landed Viking 1 and 2 on Mars. These would become the first to both land on the red planet and successfully send back extensive information about its environment. As such, they launched the era of Mars rovers, kicking off this moment in time when the planet is inhabited solely by robots. But were there ever living through?

things on the red planet. This is where the Viking craft come into play. Their mission was to search the red planet for signs of life. Each of the landing probes arrived with a corresponding spaceship that would orbit the planet as the probes explored its surface. Both probes went on to send data back from their landing sites for the next several years, beginning the era of what could be called human presence on Mars, albeit remotely via robotic envoys. Not that Viking 1 and 2 were the only human-made objects on the red planet, though.

Previous failed Soviet probes must have left some kind of remnants there too, lurking in the dry Martian landscape or its cold atmosphere. Viking 1 landed in a vast plain scattered with boulders, dunes and rocky outcroppings called Chrys and Planicia. There it tested Martian soil for the first time in human history. A robotic arm took the sample to be analyzed in a laboratory on board. The other lander, Viking 2, operated in a different location. called Utopia Planitia, a rocky lava plain in the north of the planet. There it captured striking scenes of frost on the ground during the Martian winter. Scientists analysed the composition of the frost and found it was made of water, like frost on Earth.

The Viking landers discovered other intriguing evidence that Mars was once a water. planet. They found signs of ancient riverbeds and widespread flooding in the distant past. Scientists saw this as an exciting sign that Mars could have harbored life long ago. But what about any traces of life forms currently living on the rocky, barren planet? Some of the Viking probe's findings seem to indicate the possibility of existing life, but others showed negative results. Scientists ultimately determined that the Vikings' soil and rock samples

didn't show any signs of living things. They did, however, find the elements required for life as we know it on Earth. Carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. Interestingly, some scientists now theorise that the Viking probes could have actually found microscopic alien life, but not been equipped to recognise it. Certain astrobiologists and other experts

are now speculating that life on Mars might have evolved to live without water, adapting to the increasingly arid conditions on the planet over time. If this were the case, experiments designed to identify lifeful, forms in the Martian samples, could have accidentally drowned them instead by applying water to creatures that live without it. This idea can't be proved one way or another based on past data, but it suggests a tantalizing new avenue for future study. At any rate, the two Viking craft also sent a great deal of other data back to Earth,

advancing understanding of Mars and informing future missions. For example, they showed that the planet has volcanic soil and a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. NASA had planned the Viking mission to go on for just 90 days after landing, but the craft continued operating for much longer. The Viking 2 orbiter kept functioning until 1978, taking high-resolution images and studying the surface and atmosphere of Mars. And the Viking One orbiter went on for double that long, circling the planet 1,489 times over four years, before it finally stopped functioning. Even after the orbitors stopped working, the Viking landing mission still continued on.

Mission controllers received the last data from the Viking 2 lander in April 1980. But the Viking 1 lander kept communicating more than two years longer before sending its final transmission on November 11, 1982. And then robots on Mars went silent for a time. It would be many years before more robotic vehicles transmitted from the Martian surface. The Soviet space program did attempt two additional Mars missions in the late 1980s.

But, like many previous Soviet missions, they were doomed to disappointment. One ship failed in transit, while the other made it, but failed after just a few days of observations. Similarly, another U.S. mission attempt also ended in disqualification. appointment, when mission controllers lost contact with the ship shortly before it reached orbit.

But then, as the millennium drew towards its close and the year 2000 loomed near, missions to Mars finally picked up again, starting in 1996. And soon, for the first time, other nations besides the US and the Soviet Union began to join in. That's when NASA launched the Mars Global Surveyor, the first successful mission to the red planet in two decades. The spaceship would orbit Mars for 10 years and make huge advances in scientific understanding of the planet. For example, where previous missions had found signs of ancient water flow on Mars, the global surveyor found indications that water still flows on the planet at times.

And that same year, the US Space Program also launched a Mars lander and a rugged vehicle and mobile science lab designed to explore the craggy Martian landscape called a rover. The Pathfinder landing craft touched down on Mars Ares Valles and delivered the Sojourner Rover, the first ever robotic rover vehicle on Mars. These returned more exciting new data and images from the planet's surface. The year 1996 also saw an electrifying, if controversial announcement in the search for Martian life. Scientists from NASA and Stanford University had been studying a meteorite from the red planet that had been found in Antarctica. The team of scientists announced that they'd discovered. evidence in the Martian rock of organic molecules, which are the building blocks of all known living things.

Some experts even thought the meteorite contained fossils of microorganisms. The rock had likely been thrown into space when an asteroid hit Mars some 15 million years ago, a time when Mars was a warmer world more conducive to microbial. life as we know it. Other scientists who looked into the team's work disagreed that the meteorite contained signs of past living things, however. But either way, the episode re-energized scientific and public enthusiasm about exploring Mars and the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. The Russian Space Agency, the inheritor of the by then defunct Soviet Union, also tried to get back to Mars in 1996, but its mission failed to escape Earth's gravity. Then, two years later, for the first time, a third nation entered Martian exploration.

Japan launched a spacecraft called Nozomi, meaning wish or hope, in 1998. It was intended to orbit the red planet, but a series of malfunctions led it to complete a flyby instead, passing 600 miles from Mars. The Japanese craft is now orbiting the sun. Despite its failure to complete its original mission, the Nazomi craft marked a turning point, after which Mars exploration has slowly been becoming a much more internal. national endeavor. And the same year 1998 that Nazomi launched, the U.S. Space Agency was working on another ambitious Mars mission. This one was intended to put another lander on Mars, along with two small probes, and another spaceship into orbit to support the landing craft. That mission failed in part for a frustratingly simple reason. The Mars climate orbiter, as it was called,

burned up in the Martian atmosphere due to a navigation error caused by a basic mistake. The spacecraft programmers had failed to translate so-called English measurements into the metric system. But the history of Mars exploration, like so much in science and engineering and And life itself is a story of learning from mistakes as much as from successes. And space scientists remained determined to push forward in studying the planet. Just over a year later, NASA sent off another Mars orbiter called the Mars Odyssey. And this one made it. The 2001 Mars Odyssey mission's name was a riff on the popular science fiction film

2001, a space odyssey. Maybe that brought it luck. Whatever the reason, the spaceship had resounding success. The Odyssey became the longest continually active mission orbiting another planet. It's still returning data to this day, providing information about Martian clouds, fog and frost. It's also mapped the location of rocks. on the planet's surface, which is crucial for plotting future landings in places where they won't encounter major obstacles. In March of 2004, the Mars Odyssey, still circling the planet after close to a quarter century,

captured a striking image of the tallest volcano in our solar system. Called Olympus Mons, the Martian volcano is 17 miles tall, vastly more than Mount Everest's roughly five and a half mile height, and its base stretches across a whopping 373 miles. In the image, the volcano shows up as an immense dark patch, looming up from the lighter-colored plains of the dry planet. In June 2024, the Mars Odyssey spaceship circled the red planet for the 100,000th time, and it's still going strong. In the time since the Odyssey took to the Martian skies at the start of this millennium, many more missions have successfully traveled to the Red Planet with robotic envoys.

These include NASA's Mars rovers, spirit, opportunity, curiosity, and perseverance, which have captivated the public imagination here on Earth. The twin Spirit and Opportunity Rovers launched in June and July of 2003. That summer also saw the launch of a joint mission by the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, further internationalizing Martian exploration in the new century. The European mission was called Marlon, Mars Express, a name that might put one more in mind of a commuter train than a cutting-edge

mission into space. Regardless, it successfully placed a spacecraft in orbit around the red planet, where it's been studying Mars ever since. The Express has been doing groundbreaking work to uncover what's below the planet's surface, a speciality radar instrument developed in partnership with NASA, the mission has discovered various subterranean, or I suppose we should say, sub-marsian features. For example, the mission has found buried impact craters and ice deep underground. Just as the Mars Express was beginning its orbit, the spirit and opportunity rovers were touching down and setting out

across the Martian deserts for the first time. The two robotic vehicles landed on opposite sides of the planet. The twins would travel and study more than 32 miles of the rocky landscape over the following years. Their mission was to explore sites that might once have been able to sustain life, still operating under the assumption that water is necessary for living things. has remained a driving assumption throughout the exploration of Mars, even though some scientists have recently pushed back against the idea. At any rate, the Opportunity Rover advanced the search. It uncovered signs that Mars once had enough water during a long enough period that

microbial life as we know it could have existed. On the other side of the Martian world, Spirit also searched for evidence of ancient water and signs of whether the planet could have harbored living things. It roamed the surface, studying Mars's wind, geology and the history of its climate. Both rovers far outlasted the original months-long missions that NASA had planned. But, finally, after more than six years of returning remarkable new information, Spirit went silent in March 2010. Opportunity continued longer, operating for an impressive 15 years, before it finally lost communication after a massive dust storm in June 2018.

The dogged rover at last stopped operating in a place dubbed Perseverance Valley. There it will remain. A reminder of the persistence of human scientists back on Earth, who worked through so many disappointments to reach for the seemingly impossible and achieved it. The community of Earthbound space pioneers didn't stop there, though, of course. The US and a growing pool of international programs continued sending robotic craft to Mars. In 2005, NASA launched another spaceship to orbit the planet, descriptively named the Mars reconnaissance orbiter. It too was tasked with studying the history of water on the dry planet.

Soon, it was circling Mars, capturing close-up photos of the surface and monitoring the system's weather. Carrying the largest camera ever used on a planetary mission, it would zoom in on items as small as a dinner table. This was a huge leap forward, as previous orbitors couldn't identify anything smaller than a school bus. The Mars reconnaissance orbiter has identified mineral deposits that may have formed in long-gone bodies of water.

It's examined signs of water flowing in the distant past, and it searched for the remnants of shorelines to ain't. ancient seas or lakes. The orbiter's powerful camera has also allowed it to map additional large rocks that could endanger future landings on the planet. This was invaluable for NASA's next Mars mission, a smaller, lower-cost spacecraft and lander known as Phoenix. The Phoenix launched in August 2007 and rocketed into the Martian atmosphere at almost 13,000 miles per hour the following year. The Phoenix landed in a spot known as the Green Valley of Vastitas Borealis in the Martian Arctic, at a latitude equivalent to that of northern Alaska on Earth.

Scientists sent the lander to that region near Mars's North Pole because the area contains water ice. Studying it could shed light on the presence and history of liquid water on the planet. The phoenix was set to probe signs of water and to look for organic molecules. After returning data to Earth for six months, the craft solar panels stopped working in the dark of the Martian winter, and it fell silent. The European Space Agency also continued to expand. and its efforts. The agency launched a spacecraft called Rosetta,

which carried the lander Philae, flying by Mars in 2007 on its way to study a distant comet. In 2011, NASA's Curiosity rover set out for Mars. This one was larger and had even more capacities than the previous rovers. Curiosity is about the size of a car and the height of a tall human. NASA has compared its height to a basketball player.

It has a seven-foot robotic arm that can reach out to study rocks up close. It's equipped with a laser to vaporize rocks at a distance, a drill to collect powdered rock samples and 17 cameras. Curiosity was set to continue

studying whether Mars ever had the conditions to support microbial life. And after touching down, the rover quickly found more evidence that the answer to that question is, yes. It discovered chemical and mineral signs that the planet was once conducive to microbial life as we know it. So that meant the planet could once have harbored tiny life forms similar to those of Earth. did it. To try to answer that question, the rover got to work studying the geological record from

the era when Mars was more habitable for earth-like life forms. Roving an area called the Gale Crater, Curiosity began taking samples of rocks, soil and air to analyze on board. To home in on samples, most likely to yield results, it searched for specific types of rocks that formed in water or have signs of organic matter. Eventually, Curiosity found evidence that complex organic molecules existed on Mars about 3.5 billion years ago. Organic matter isn't definitive evidence of life, but its presence makes the possibility of past life on Mars look increasingly likely. After Curiosity had roamed the planet for a couple of years, the The US space program sent another orbiter in 2013, this time with a new goal.

While the existing spacecraft and rovers continue to search for signs of water and microbial life, the new mission was to study the Martian atmosphere and climate change. Mars is losing its atmosphere as it escapes bit by bit into space. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, known by the acronym, Maven, was planned to study just how much atmosphere the planet has lost over time. Maven also includes a citizen science component which crowdsources analysis by making data available to the general public. Members of the public are invited to study the information and try to find patterns in

Martian cloud shapes and cloud systems, for example. Around the time Maven went into orbit, a spaceship from India reached the red planet for the first time as well. India's Mars probe, called Mars Orbiter Mission, or Mangalian, meaning Mars craft, began orbiting the planet in 2014. Its success made the Indian Space Research Organization the fourth space space agency in the world to place a craft into Martian orbit. The Mangalian probe beamed back data for the next seven and a half years from a variety of instruments, including a colour camera, an ultraviolet spectrometer, and a sensor for methane. And in recent years, Mars exploration has become even more international.

The European Space Agency, or ESA, and Russia, collaborated on a Mars mission called the ExoMars Programme to study the question of life on the red planet. The mission began by sending a spaceship to orbit Mars in 2016, and ExoMars is working towards a landing planned for the late 2020s. Then in 2021, the United Arab Emirates and China both joined in Mars exploration. The UAE sent an orbiter called Hope to the red planet, outfitted with a camera plus infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers to study the Martian atmosphere. China went a stepfather, sending both an orbiter and a small rover called Jurong, which successfully

landed on Mars. The Chinese rover returned data that scientists at Hong Kong Polytechnic University believe may indicate the coastline of an ancient sea. Reviewing sediment channels, mud formations, and the makeup of surface deposits in the area, the team said they believe an ocean may have existed at the site some 3.68 billion years ago. Despite the increasingly international nature, of Mars exploration, though, NASA has remained at the frontier, sending another lander in 2018 and then yet another rover not long after. The Insight lander was the first effort to study the interior of Mars in depth. It researched the planet's crust, mantle and core, illuminating the processes that shaped the rocky planets of our solar system over four

billion years ago. It also captured sounds caused by wind blowing across the desolate Martian surface at about 10 to 15 miles per hour. Hearing that low and haunting rumble evokes the alien landscape in a new and almost surreal way as it seems to transport the listener to that distant world. In July of 2020, as the COVID pandemic ravaged the earth, and disrupted human societies, scientists and dreamers once more directed their gaze towards space. NASA's Perseverance Rover was beginning its time on Mars. The rover landed in a 28-mile-wide crater called Jezero Crater, which planners believe was once the site of an ancient river delta that flooded the area with water

billions of years ago, scientists from around the world contributed to the choice of the landing site, which was selected after five years of study. Jezero crater is situated to the north of the Martian equator on the western edge of a plane called Isidis Planitia. The crater provides a window into the dry planet's wetter past. Current scientific thinking says that somewhere before 3.5 billion years ago, river channels spilled over the crater wall and created a lake, depositing clay minerals along the way. Microbes could have lived in that lake at some point in time. If they did, the Perseverance

rover might find evidence of them in the sediment around the crater. The rover also carried a small helicopter called the ingenuity, which would become the first machine to fly through the skies of another planet, as opposed to simply descending through the atmosphere to land. In an homage to the saga of human flight, the ingenuity helicopter carried a bit of fabric from the airplane in which the Wright brothers made the first airplane flight in 1903. Just 117 years after that first airplane flight, the material flew again on Mars. Its journey highlights the incredible speed of invention in modern times. Not long after human feet first left the ground to soar through Earth's atmosphere,

humankind began operating robotic craft in the skies of Mars. It's enough to make us wonder whether actual humans may touch Martian soil sometime in the not-too-distant future. And in fact, the Perseverance Rover's mission was planned for just that eventuality, though perhaps not in the way you'd think. The rover carries a drill designed to collect samples from Mars to be analyzed back on Earth. The idea is that a future mission could be able to be. could pick them up and bring them home to this planet for detailed study. So while the mission controllers weren't expecting any imminent human mission to the red planet,

they are planning for human hands to possibly touch Martian soil here on Earth. The return of anything at all from Mars to Earth would be a quantum leap forward in space exploration. Mars missions so far have been one-way trips, due to the difficulty of the difficulty of powering a spaceship to take off from the planet and return home. Given the exponential rate of development and discovery so far though, as the age of flight has evolved into the age of interplanetary and even interstellar travel, we may expect to see many new firsts in the years to come. With a bit of spirit and a whole lot of perseverance, there will be many opportunities to further push the

boundaries of knowledge. Along the way, humankind may discover ever more about the red planet, uncovering more about our solar system and even the origins of life in the process. To advance scientific knowledge, international collaboration is the order of the day. The European and US space agencies recently agreed to work together on ESA's planned landing mission set to launch in 2028. And with so many countries contributing, you could say the sky's the limit, except that limit was broken long ago. So perhaps we should say there is no limit, as long as people gaze upward at the distant cosmos and keep reaching for the stars.