The Sirens of Mars

by Sarah Stewart Johnson

  NORTHERN OCEAN Articles about the possibility of an ancient ocean on Mars include: M. H. Carr and J. W. Head III, “Oceans on Mars: An Assessment of the Observational Evidence and Possible Fate,” Journal of Geophysical Research Planets, 108 (2003); R. I. Citron, M. Manga, and D. J. Hemingway, “Timing of Oceans on Mars from Shoreline Deformation,” Nature, 555 (2018), pp. 643–646; G. Di Achille and B. M. Hynek, “Ancient Ocean on Mars Supported by Global Distribution of Deltas and Valleys,” Nature Geoscience, 3 (2010), pp. 459–463; M. C. Malin and K. S. Edgett, “Oceans or Seas in the Martian Northern Lowlands: High Resolution Imaging Tests of Proposed Coastlines,” Geophysical Research Letters, 26 (1999), pp. 3,049–3,052.

  ABYSSAL PLAINS J. W. Head III, et al., “Oceans in the Past History of Mars: Tests for Their Presence Using Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Data,” Geophysical Research Letters (Dec. 1998), p. 4,403; J. W. Head III, et al., “Possible Ancient Oceans on Mars: Evidence from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter Data,” Science, 286 (1999), pp. 2,134–2,137.

  THREE AND A HALF J. P. Bibring, et al., “Global Mineralogical and Aqueous Mars History Derived from OMEGA/Mars Express Data,” Science, 312 (April 2006), pp. 400–404.

  ALMOST ALL OF THE ATMOSPHERE With essentially no greenhouse effect, the surface temperatures of Mars, following the Stefan-Boltzmann law, slowly dropped to an average of minus 60 degrees Celsius, the surface temperature today.

  DUST THE CONSISTENCY OF K. S. Edgett and H. E. Newsom, “Dust Deposited from Eolian Suspension on Natural and Space Flight Hardware Surfaces in Gale Crater as Observed Using Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI),” presented at Dust in the Atmosphere of Mars and Its Impact on Human Exploration, Houston, Texas (June 2017).

  JUST ONE OF THE MANY FEATURES Where we should look and what we should look for is a matter of continual debate. Astrobiologists bump heads about the definition of life—and whether a definition even makes sense. See: Benton Clark, “A Generalized and Universalized Definition of Life Applicable to Extraterrestrial Environments,” in Handbook of Astrobiology, ed. Vera M. Kolb (Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2018), and for an alternative line of thinking, see: C. E. Cleland and C. F. Chyba, “Defining Life,” Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 32 (2002), pp. 387–393; C. E. Cleland and C. F. Chyba, “Does ‘Life’ Have a Definition?” in Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology, ed. W. T. Sullivan III, and J. A. Baross (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), pp. 119–131; C. E. Cleland, The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life: Searching for Life As We Don’t Know It (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019). Philosopher Carol Cleland argues that, lacking a theory of life, trying to come up with a definition of life is premature. Water, for instance, was once described with terms like “wet” and “thirst-quenching” but couldn’t be meaningfully defined until the existence of molecular theory—until the discovery of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

  AS A RESULT, MARS While humans have analyzed meteorites from Mars that have landed on Earth, no humans have ever landed on the planet’s surface.

  Chapter 1: Into the Silent Sea

  KÁRMÁN LINE Because Earth’s atmosphere becomes thinner with increasing altitude, it is difficult to say precisely where space begins. The Hungarian-American scientist Theodore von Kármán initially described the border between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space to be approximately eighty kilometers above sea level—“where aerodynamics stops and astronautics begins.” Today the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale defines the Kármán line as one hundred kilometers above sea level. Where space begins has far-reaching implications for space policy and will likely become increasingly important as commercial space-flight ventures increase suborbital activity.

  “TODAY THE FINGERTIP” Walter Sullivan, “Mankind, Through Mariner, Reaching for Mars Today,” The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky., July 14, 1965).

  VON KÁRMÁN AUDITORIUM Ray Duncan, “Army of Newsmen to Jam Pasadena for Mars Probe,” The Independent (Pasadena, Calif., July 12, 1965).

  “EARLY BIRD” Ibid.

  THIRTY-SEVEN PHONES Ibid.

  TEMPERATURE-CONTROL TESTING Ibid.

  138,000 PARTS J. N. James, “The Voyage of Mariner IV,” Scientific American, 214, no. 3 (March 1966), pp. 42–53.

  “VOICELESS ‘RUSSIAN SPY’ ” Dave Swaim, “Mars Spaceship Has Company,” The Independent (Pasadena, Calif., July 13, 1965).

  “ ‘DEAD’ SOVIET MARS” “ ‘Dead’ Soviet Mars Missile Still on Way,” Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, Calif., July 14, 1965).

  310 WATTS Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, “On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958–1978” (Washington, D.C.: The NASA History Series, 1984), p. 434.

  TENTH OF A BILLIONTH OF A BILLIONTH “ To Mars: The Odyssey of Mariner IV,” JPL Technical Memorandum, No. 33-229, p. 24.

  GREAT DISHES Mariner 4 was tracked twelve hours a day by the Goldstone station in California; the remaining time was covered by the Australian station at Tidbinbilla (outside Canberra) and a station at Johannesburg, which has since been replaced by a Spanish complex sixty kilometers west of Madrid. “To Mars: The Odyssey of Mariner IV,” p. 25; Douglas J. Mudgway and Roger Launius, “Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network, 1957–1997” (Washington, D.C.: The NASA History Series, 2001).

  THERE WERE WORRIES Blaine Baggett, dir., The Changing Face of Mars: Beginnings of the Space Age (Pasadena, Calif.: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2013), DVD video.

  A FORMIDABLE ADVERSARY The Soviets were extremely secretive about their space program. While Mars 1, the mission that made it 106 million kilometers before the radio transmitter went dead, was announced at the time, others were long matters of speculation in the West.

  THE FIRST SENTIENT BEINGS The first being sent into orbit was Laika the dog, a small stray mongrel from the streets of Moscow, who launched on Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. Laika died, likely of overheating, just a few hours after launch, and the capsule burned up on reentering the Earth’s atmosphere on April 14, 1958. The first creatures to return safely were launched on Sputnik 5, or Korabl-Sputnik 2, on August 19, 1960. The dogs were named Belka and Strelka (“Whitey” and “Little Arrow”). They were taxidermized after dying of old age. Their bodies now reside at the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow.

  NOT SO LUCKY Andrew J. LePage, “The Beginnings of Planetary Exploration,” The Space Review (October 11, 2010).

  ROCKET TO MARS FAILED Caleb A. Scharf, “The Long Hard Road to Mars,” Scientific American, Nov. 25, 2011; “Marsnik 2,” NASA, Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, Sept. 5, 2019.

  PULL OFF HIS SHOE This has been widely rumored but remains an unconfirmed story. See: William Taubman, “Did He Bang It? Nikita Khrushchev and the Shoe,” The New York Times (July 26, 2003); C. Eugene Emery Jr., “The Curious Case of the Khrushchev Shoe,” PolitiFact (Jan. 18, 2015); Arthur I. Cyr, “PolitiFact Bizarrely, Unjustly Attacks Me on Krushchev Shoe Banging,” Providence Journal (Feb. 22, 2015).

  A MUTE WITNESS At the time, long-range radio communications were the Soviets’ Achilles’ heel, one area where the Americans had the advantage. For a terrific resource on the early Soviet space missions, see: James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997).

  THEIR SUCCESSES The first spacecraft that crashed into the moon was Luna 2, in September 1958, and the first to take pictures of the far side—an incredible feat at the time—was Luna 3, in October of the same year. The first spacewalk, completed by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2, occurred in March 1965, and it preceded Ed White’s spacewalk on Gemini 4 by just under three months.

  FIRST ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE Sputnik was launched on the same vehicle as the first ICBM, and just six weeks later.

  MARINER 2 TO VENUS Mariner 1 was also designed to fly by Venus. It launched on July 22,
1962, on an Atlas-Agena rocket. A DESTRUCT command was sent shortly thereafter, after launch data indicated the mission was doomed.

  “MISSION OF SEVEN MIRACLES” Franklin O’Donnell, “The Venus Mission: How Mariner 2 Led the World to the Planets,” NASA, JPL/Caltech (2012).

  “LIMPING ON ONE SOLAR PANEL” Ibid.

  GETTING TO VENUS Launch windows for Venus occur more frequently than launch windows for Mars, once every 584 days compared to 780 days. Because Venus is closer, the flight time is also shorter, and communications need to travel a shorter distance.

  NEVER-BEFORE-TESTED STAR TRACKER Norman Haynes, personal interview by Sarah Johnson (Pasadena, Calif., Feb. 1, 2018).

  “THE FIRST THAT EVER BURST” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Poetry Foundation, 1834 text).

  TWO MARINER MISSIONS TO MARS In 1960, NASA decided that lunar probes would be named after land-exploration activities, whereas planetary-mission probes would be named after nautical terms, to connote “the impression of travel to great distances and remote lands.” For more on naming conventions, see: Helen T. Wells, Susan H. Whiteley, and Carrie E. Karegeannes, “Origins of NASA Names” (Washington, D.C.: The NASA History Series, 1976).

  “FLYING WINDMILLS” Baggett, The Changing Face of Mars.

  THE NOSE FAIRING “Mariner 4 Probe Due in Two Weeks,” Pasadena Star-News (Nov. 6, 1964).

  DERELICT ORBIT AROUND John C. Waugh, “Mars Probe Falls Silent,” The Christian Science Monitor (Boston: Nov. 1964).

  MARS AND EARTH ALIGN These periods, when Mars and the sun align on opposites sides of the Earth—when Mars and Earth are closest—are called oppositions.

  POP LIKE POPCORN Haynes, personal interview by Johnson.

  POKING TINY HOLES Ibid.

  PAD 37 Jack N. James, In High Regard (Jack James Trust, 2006), p. 450.

  DESIGNED TO DO “Mars Flight—on Up & Up,” Pasadena Star-News (Nov. 28, 1964).

  CLUSTER OF THREE STARS Marvin Miles, “Mariner 4 Locks on to Key Star After Four Misses,” Los Angeles Times (Dec. 1, 1964); Marvin Miles, “Mariner to Fly Within 5,400 Miles of Mars,” Los Angeles Times (Dec. 11, 1964).

  KEPT GETTING DISLODGED Initially, the gyro control unit could only be turned on by ground control if Canopus was lost, but a command sent on December 17, 1964, automated the reacquisition. “Mariner Mars 1964 Project Report: Spacecraft Performance and Analysis,” JPL Technical Report, No. 32-882 (Pasadena, Calif.: NASA, 1967), p. 17; “To Mars: The Odyssey of Mariner 4,” pp. 21–22; W. C. Goss, “The Mariner Spacecraft Star Sensors,” Applied Optics, 9, issue 5 (1970), pp. 1,056–1,067.

  HALFWAY AROUND THE SUN Earth and Mars are revolving around the sun, so as a spacecraft travels to Mars, it also revolves around the sun.

  “PICTURES, THAT’S NOT SCIENCE” This quote is attributed to Bud Schurmeier, though he did not share this view. “Mariner 4 Taught Us to See,” JPL Blog (August 20, 2013).

  BUT LEIGHTON HAD A DEEP PASSION For a detailed recounting of Leighton’s early life and involvement in the early Mariner missions, see: Heidi Aspaturian, “Interview with Robert Leighton,” California Institute of Technology Oral History Project (1986–1987), California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections (Pasadena, Calif., 1995).

  LEIGHTON HAD SPENT THE DECADE Ibid., p. 64.

  ONE OF LEIGHTON’S STUDENTS The student was Gerry Neugebauer, who went on to play a key role in the development of infrared planetary astronomy.

  TOLD HIS COLLEAGUES Bruce Murray, interviewed by Rachel Prud’homme, audiocassette recording transcript, California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections (Pasadena, Calif., 1993), p. 76.

  “BOB, AS A DUTY TO” Graham Berry, “Interview with Robert P. Sharp,” California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections (Pasadena, Calif., 2001), p. 43.

  TWENTY-ONE PHOTOGRAPHS “Press Kit, Mariner Mars Encounter,” NASA (July 9, 1965).

  THE HOPE WAS TO COLLECT It was lucky the actual images (which captured Amazonis Planitia, Elysium, Western Memnonia Fossae, Eastern Gorgonum Chaos, Orcus Patera, and Aonia Terra) came as close to the hoped-for path as they did, as even a tiny midcourse error would have moved the spacecraft by hundreds of kilometers. Intended path from “Press Kit, Mariner Mars Encounter,” NASA.

  WORLD’S FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA The first digital camera with a CCD image sensor wasn’t developed at Eastman Kodak until the mid-1970s, but Mariner 4’s camera was the first to transmit images in binary code—i.e., as a long series of zeros and ones. See: Fred C. Billingsley, “Processing Ranger and Mariner Photography,” Optical Engineering, 4, no. 4, 404147 (May 1, 1966); “First Digital Image From Space (Mariner 4-Mars),” NASA, JPL/Caltech (Sept. 28, 2018).

  “SCIENTIFIC PRIEST” Murray, interviewed by Prud’homme, p. 79.

  THE “FIXED” STARS Enn Kasak and Raul Veede, “Understanding Planets in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Folklore, 16 (2001).

  BLAZING RED LAMP Mars can vary dramatically in brightness. Although Jupiter is usually brighter (even at perihelic oppositions), during the August 2003 opposition, when Mars was closer than it had been since the Neanderthals still controlled Europe, it outshone every other object in the night sky except the moon and Venus.

  ELONGATED LOOP In Babylon, the planets were regarded as the “interpreters” of the gods, leading priest-astronomers to carefully archive records of the planets’ motions. Later, as the arithmetic methods of the Babylonians were blended with the spatial and geometric imagination of the Greeks, the planets were seen as moving in the circles-on-circles of epicycles around the Earth, which was the hearth at the center of the whole system. Mars rode on a large epicycle, which was needed to explain the large loops backward that it underwent every two years, and since the size of its loops varied, the center of its epicycle had to be placed off-center to the Earth. By the sixteenth century, Copernicus decided to put the sun at the center of his system, and Mars’s largest epicycle was no longer needed—since it was now evident that it was merely an illusion of perspective, created as the Earth, following its own orbit around the sun, caught up with and passed the slower-moving Mars. In 1609, Johannes Kepler worked out the elliptic shape of the planetary orbits, using the orbit of Mars, which is highly elliptical, as the basis of his protracted and difficult calculations. This was one of the great discoveries of modern astronomy—and we owe it all to Mars.

  PLATO CONCLUDED THAT Plato, “Book X,” The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Cambridge: Internet Classics Archive, MIT, 2008). See also the claim that, based on the planets’ observed “retrogradation” and “wobbling,” “it almost seemed (for example, to Plato when the Timaeus was being written) that nothing less than an exercise of free will could account for their reversals of direction”: Robert Sherrick Brumbaugh, Plato for the Modern Age (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991).

  PERSPICILLUM, OR TELESCOPE Although the principle of the telescope had been discovered by lens makers in Holland a year or two earlier, Galileo independently worked out everything else, and he built several telescopes on his own, of which only two survive. The better of these has a five-centimeter lens and is about a meter long, with a tube consisting of two grooved wooden shells held together by copper bands and covered in paper. For more information, see Giorgio Strano, ed., Galileo’s Telescope: The Instrument that Changed the World (Florence, Italy: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, 2008).

  UTTERLY STILL David Wootton, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 96.

  THROUGH ITS TINY APERTURE Galileo didn’t actually get around to Mars until later in 1610; with a telescope, he also discovered craters and mountains on the moon, the four large satellites of Jupiter, and the stars of the Milky Way.

  A SPHERICAL BODY William K. Hartmann and Odell Raper, The New Mars: The Discoveries of Mariner 9 (Washing
ton, D.C.: NASA Office of Space Science, 1974), p. 1; Galileo even suspected—though this was at the very limit of what he could make out—that it showed a phase, making it look like a tiny gibbous moon.

  “IF WE COULD BELIEVE” Galileo Galilei, “Third Letter on Sunspots, from Galileo Galilei to Mark Welser, In which Venus, the Moon, and the Medicean Planets Are also Dealt With, and New Appearances of Saturn Are Revealed,” Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Stillman Drake, ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1957), p. 137.

  POPPY SEED Galileo’s telescope, the best in the world at the time, magnified twenty times, but Mars was far away from Earth when Galileo first observed it.

  CONCAVE LENSES Such as the ones Galileo used as eyepieces in his first telescopes.

  IN 1659 This night in 1659, November 28, was three hundred five years to the day before Mariner 4 launched to Mars.

  BLOB DISAPPEAR AND REAPPEAR William Sheehan, The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), p. 21.

  HOURGLASS SEA This feature is now known as Syrtis Major; the dark color comes from dust-free basaltic rock.

  60 PERCENT THE SIZE The true proportion is 53 percent.

  ROUGHLY TWENTY-FOUR HOURS The Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, another leading observer of Mars at the time, soon modified this to twenty-four hours and forty minutes.

  “NOTHING BUT VAST DESERTS” Christiaan Huygens, “Cosmotheoros,” quoted in William Miller, The Heavenly Bodies: Their Nature and Habitability (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1883), p. 101.