 |
 |
||
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
 |
Planetary News: Mars (2008)Visions of Mars Goes to MarsBy A.J.S. Rayl25 May 2008
As Phoenix touched down on Mars, something wonderful happened. The spacecraft delivered The Planetary Society's Visions of Mars DVD to the surface as a kind of time capsule for future explorers. Attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, the DVD is, in effect, the first library on Mars. It includes a collection of 19th and 20th Century science fiction stories, essays and art inspired by the Red Planet, as well as the names of more than a quarter-million inhabitants of Earth. The Visions content represents 20 nations and cultures and includes works by Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan, sf authors Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Kim Stanley Robinson, and Mars science pioneer Percival Lowell, among many more. “There were really two reasons for doing this -- one is to connect us with future explorers of Mars, the stuff that inspired us and what will inspire them,” said Louis D. Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society. “We wanted to provide that connection. And secondly, we wanted to honor the interplay –-- as Carl said in his introduction on the disc-- the “dance between science and science fiction.” They feed each other to make a creative process a lot greater.” Friedman came up with the idea when his friend Isaac Asimov died. “I began thinking -- how do we honor him?” Friedman recalled. “And it’s not just him. It’s what he represented. So then I thought -- why not honor three giants -- Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke -- A,B,C -- and do it by sending their stories to Mars. Then I began discussing it with Carl and other people and it grew into this bigger idea, this notion of a science fiction anthology.” Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is always hard and always carries risk. In fact, this will be The Planetary Society's second attempt to send Visions of Mars to its namesake planet. It was originally created by the Society to ride aboard Russia's Mars ‘96 spacecraft, which failed shortly after launch. “It’s been a lesson in persistence rewarded, because it’s been 16 years since I started working on this,” said Jon Lomberg, project director and editor-in-chief of Visions, in an interview earlier today. “When the Russian mission failed to make orbit and wound up at the bottom of the ocean. You work for years and years on something and it’s over in a second and there’s no Plan B. If your spacecraft fails, that’s it. So I kind of wrote it off, thinking what a shame it never got to Mars. That’s one of the worst parts of space exploration and everyone who’s in this business knows this. So it takes a lot of optimism and willingness to confront that risk.”
But they also know the risk is worth it -- and Earthlings have had a love affair with Mars since time immemorial. " For more than a century, Mars has beckoned, inspiring tales of wonder and adventure," said Director of Projects for The Planetary Society Bruce Betts. "Many men and women who now work in the space program first turned their eyes to the sky because of the childhood wonder kindled by the astronomical artists and science fiction authors featured on Visions of Mars. And, projects like this get people involved.” Led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith, of the University of Arizona, with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and a development partnership with Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Phoenix will be the first lander to explore the Martian arctic. Designed to search for and study water ice, the spacecraft is a fixed lander with a suite of advanced instruments and a 7.7-foot robotic arm that can dig a half-meter deep into the soil. The Phoenix team hopes to uncover clues in the icy arctic soil about the history of near surface ice and the planet's potential for habitability. International contributions for Phoenix are provided by the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), the University of Copenhagen, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The Visions disc will appear in some of the calibration images that Phoenix takes to adjust its cameras, so people may be able to actually see it on the Martian surface. Those who have the original Visions of Mars, released in CD-ROM format in 1996, actually have 99% of what is on this disc, Betts said. What wouldn’t be on the original CD-ROM is Peter Smith’s introduction and various background notes. The other significant difference, Betts said, is that "it's been converted to a non-proprietary format." The library should be able to last at least 500 years on Mars, so there will be plenty of time for a future generation to discover and enjoy the works included on the DVD. Although it is designed a time capsule for future human explorers, no one would complain if another extraterrestrial species happened by first. “The Planetary Society has no bias,” said Friedman. “We’re not Americans and we’re not Earth-centered or human-centered. We don’t care what life comes and gets it and listens to it.” Founded by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman in 1980, The Planetary Society is the largest space interest group in the world, inspiring millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. |
|||||||
 |
 |
|||||||
[ what is this? ]