Tom Whaley: Four current missions to Mars put red planet in the news By Tom Whaley
NASA correspondent
July 9, 2003

The road to Mars is a difficult one. Witness the 16 failed Soviet/Russian missions and five failed U.S. missions since 1960. The U.S. has had nine successful missions, including NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, which are both currently in orbit around the red planet.

Mars Global Surveyor, launched in 1996, began its prime mission of studying the entire Martian surface, atmosphere and interior in 1999. It has returned more data about the red planet than all previous missions combined. Key findings so far are the identification of surface features that suggest there may be current sources of water at or near the surface.

This is important because water is critical to all life forms as we know them. Magnetometer readings also show that, unlike Earth, the Martian magnetic field is not globally generated in the planet's core, but is localized in particular areas of the crust.

Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, is another orbiting spacecraft, this one designed to determine the composition of the planet's surface, to detect water and shallow buried ice, and to study the radiation environment.

There are four missions on the way to Mars hoping to join Global Surveyor and Odyssey late this year or early next year. Japan's Nozomi mission, launched in 1998, has a four-year delayed arrival in December, because of propulsion problems along the way. Nozomi is intended to orbit Mars and study the upper atmosphere with emphasis on its interaction with the solar wind.

NASA is participating in the Mars Express, a mission of the European Space Agency launched in June, which will explore the atmosphere and surface of Mars from an orbit around the poles. This mission includes a lander, called Beagle 2, which will perform biological and geochemical experiments from a stationary position on the surface.

NASA has two more missions on the way in the form of the two Mars Exploration Rovers launched in the past month. These rovers carry sophisticated instruments to search for evidence of liquid water that may have been present in the planet's past.

During recent months, NASA has been developing a long-term Mars exploration program that charts the course for the next two decades. The new program incorporates the lessons learned from previous mission successes and failures, and builds on scientific discoveries from past missions.

NASA's program of Mars exploration is built around four major themes:

Determine if life ever arose on Mars.

Characterize the climate of Mars.

Characterize the geology of Mars.

Prepare for human exploration of Mars.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled for launch in 2005, will be equipped with cameras to zoom in for extreme close-up photography of the Martian surface, carry a sounder to find subsurface water, and look for safe and scientifically worthy landing sites for future exploration.

Toward the end of the decade, NASA hopes to launch a roving long-range, long-duration science laboratory that will be a major leap in surface measurements and pave the way for future sample return missions to be accomplished in the next decade.

Over the past three decades, spacecraft have shown that Mars is rocky, cold and sterile beneath its hazy, pink sky. Today's Martian wasteland hints at a formerly volatile world where volcanoes once raged, meteors plowed deep craters, and flash floods rushed over the land.

Home to the largest volcano in the solar system, the deepest canyon, and crazy weather patterns, Mars continues to inspire awe and the desire to know more in the hearts and minds of the scientific community.

Tom Whaley is a solar system ambassador in the outreach program of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He lives in Vero Beach.