Of all the planets, none has captured the world’s VGP-BPS8 Battery like Mars. Its reddish color and changes in brightness over time make the planet an unforgettable sight.
In “Cosmos,” the television science series from the nineteen eighties, scientist Carl Sagan talked about some traditional ideas about Mars. Some of these ideas are from the English science fiction writer H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds.” Others are from the mistaken science of Percival Lowell, the American astronomer who believed intelligent beings lived on Mars.
VGP-BPL9 Battery described Martians as threatening. Lowell imagined them as the hopeful engineers of great works. Carl Sagan said that both ideas influenced the public deeply.
FAITH LAPIDUS:Today, Mars continues to excite -- not as the object of science fiction but of scientific study. Space scientists have collected a wealth of information from spacecraft that have orbited, landed on and dug into the Martian surface.
Crowds gathered near Mars Day exhibits in the Milestones of Sony VGP-BPS10 at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington
The Smithsonian’s Mars Day offered a chance for people of all ages to touch Mars, or at least a piece of it. Allison and Alycia from Silver Spring, Maryland, brought their children, Grace, Sam, Ryan and Emma. They heard about Mars and its geology from experts. They could see a test version of the Viking landers that reached Mars in July of nineteen seventy-six.
They also saw meteorites Sony VGP-BPS13/B Battery to have come from the red, or reddish, planet. Eight-year-old Sam learned that the ancient description of Mars as red is not exactly right.
SAM: “ It’s actually really orangish more than it’s red and it’s also kind of brown too. It’s not really red.”
Emma is six. She found out about the volcanic activity that has shaped the surface of Mars.
EMMA: “That the closest VGP-BPS13B/Q Battery to Mars—the stuff—is from volcanoes mostly.”
DOUG JOHNSON:Orbiting spacecraft have shown a huge mountain on Mars called Olympus Mons. It is over twenty-five kilometers high and the largest known volcano in the solar system. Volcanoes on Mars suggest to Sam that the same kinds of processes that take place on Earth happen on other worlds.
SAM: “You’ll find something on Earth as close to what is pretty much on Mars. Like the volcanic rocks because I actually think those are very interesting.”
VGP-BPS2A Battery Day offered Allison and Alysia’s children a chance to learn more about a world that humans may set foot on within their lifetimes. Emma is already looking forward to that day.
EMMA: “There are all sorts of rovers and stuff up there that are waiting to be discovered when people go up there.”
FAITH LAPIDUS:Can a space rock be a rock star? Meet Allan Hills 84001. American scientists discovered this meteorite in Antarctica in nineteen eighty-four. But it formed on Mars long before that. Scientists believe it is more than four billion years old.
A piece of Allan Hills 84001
Allan Hills 84001 is as close as any meteorite v Sony VGP-BPS9 Battery being world famous. Visitors to Mars Day crowded around a piece of the meteorite in the huge Milestones of Flight Gallery. They were listening to an expert who is in charge of meteorites at the Smithsonian.
CARI CORRIGAN: “I’m Cari Corrigan. I’m a geologist over at the Natural History Museum. I curate the Antarctic meteorite collection at the museum, so we have about nineteen thousand six hundred seventy-five to be, you know, really vague.”
DOUG JOHNSON:Cari Corrigan does research on meteorites from Mars and the moon. She says the best places to find meteorites are very cold or very dry places.
CARI CORRIGAN: “They fall all over the Earth, not just Antarctica, Sony VGP-BPS9/B places for us to find them are the deserts because they don’t get weathered and they don’t break down as easily.”
Cari Corrigan says the search for Antarctic meteorites started in the late nineteen seventies. There are about forty Martian meteorites worldwide although there may be more hidden in collections around the world.
FAITH LAPIDUS: In nineteen ninety-six, a NASA study announced the discovery of what appeared to be the mineral remains of very simple forms of life in the Allan Hills meteorite. Research has shown that these possible fossils were not formed while the rock was here on Earth. They also have been linked to the presence of liquid water.
The true nature of the mineral formations Sony VGP-BPS13 Battery the subject of debate. But one thing is sure. The discoveries in the meteorite helped shape policy and exploration efforts at the United States space agency, NASA.
Mars landers and rovers were designed to look for signs of liquid water that may have flowed on Mars in the distant past. And the search for evidence of Martian life was reborn. Looking down at a piece of the famous rock, Cari Corrigan suggested its historic importance.
CARI CORRIGAN: “So we have huge programs that came from this one research project about one football sized rock.”
Allan Hills 84001 is a plain-looking rock. But, the forces and heat that transform meteors into meteorites can create beauty as well.
CARI CORRIGAN: “This one is beautiful. This is one of my favorite rocks. You can see that black stuff on the outside, it’s called the fusion crust. And that’s what forms on the rock as it comes through the atmosphere. So a tiny bit of the outside is melted and is left with this really thin glass on the outside.”
DOUG JOHNSON:Long lines formed near another exhibit.
Children and parents waited to have a chance to work with a robot. Orbiters, landers and Sony VGP-BPS2C all been used to explore Mars. But the NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are the closest things we have to the space robots of science fiction.
The rovers were launched in two thousand three. They can think for themselves in a limited way.
Spirit and Opportunity have wheels, an arm and camera eyes. Spirit stopped operating in March. But Opportunity continues to communicate with Earth. Both have traveled across many kilometers of the Martian surface performing experiments along the way.
FAITH LAPIDUS:On Mars Day, hundreds of people waited for their chance to use robot technology. Dan Grunberg is a student at the University of Maryland. He has been working on Mars Day for four years. He supervised the two robot activities.
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