UFO Message Boards
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From: Joseph.Jackson@f728.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Joseph Jackson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: UN: Mars Visited ?
Message-ID: <671608199.0@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>
Date: 13 Apr 91 20:30:00 GMT
Sender: Uucp@egsgate.FidoNet.Org
Lines: 35
Regarding that face on Mars. I have seen the same article(s) myself.
In addition, I also saw a television program whee they put the photographs
through severe scrutiny, using computers to enhance the image and whatnot.
What they came up with was that in the so called "eyes" of the face, which
some claim to simply be a random combination that we, as humans want to say
a face, in the eyes of this face they found definate photographic evidence
of what appeared to be PUPILS.
Now if this was a random even, like clouds in the sky that just happen to
take the vague form of a human face every million years or so, then I'd like
Mr. Spock to tell me the likelyhood that this random collection of notihng
could form specific details like pupils!
To all those sceptics out there - hey, don't you guys believe in anything
that you can't see, hear, smell, touch, or read in Scientific American ??
Jackson OUT
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ORIGIN: Galaxy Class Starship DEVELOPMENT PROJECT STARDATE TR:44814.3
Utopia Planetia Starfleet Yards MARS STARDATE RC:44815.7
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From: Joseph.Jackson@f728.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Joseph Jackson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Suitable homelands
Message-ID: <671608199.1@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>
Date: 13 Apr 91 20:47:00 GMT
Sender: Uucp@egsgate.FidoNet.Org
Lines: 33
What happens when you reach out further to planets that are thousands of
light years, even millions of light years away?
Spectral analysis would tell us what the planet was like thousands or
millions of years ago. A little green guy living a few million light years
away would look at us and wouldn't see a human anywhere.
Jackson OUT
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ORIGIN: Galaxy Class Starship DEVELOPMENT PROJECT STARDATE TR:44815.7
Utopia Planetia Starfleet Yards MARS STARDATE RC:44816.4
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From: Joseph.Jackson@f728.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Joseph Jackson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: RE: Faces of Mars
Message-ID: <671780236.0@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>
Date: 14 Apr 91 17:05:00 GMT
Sender: Uucp@egsgate.FidoNet.Org
Lines: 57
Look, Steve, its really interesting to see that there is at least one
omnipotent human being around, but most of us "weak minded" children simply
weren't born with godlike powers such as yourself.
We have to actually think about things, and see if we can prove them wrong
or right - we can't simply jump to a conclusion like yourself, based upon
your complete knowledge of the universe.
So please, have patience with those of us that seem to be openminded due to
our lack of Total omniscience.
You should just consider yourself lucky to be a diety.
All praise the Timpson, the all-knowing, the all-seeing, the all-answering.
Brush away your imagination people! Embrace the purity of conservative
scepticism! All that exists is before your eyes, or in an encyclopedia
somewhere, or in the enormous confines of His great mind, the Great Timpson.
All hail the Great Timpson.
We bow to you, all knowing one.
Hmmm... hey people! Maybe Steve Timpson doesn't exist..... Maybe we've been
fooling ourselves! I mean, has anyone actually SEEN him? Has anyone actually
SPOKEN to him? Hmmmmm.......... maybe He's just a figment of our collective
imagination ????
ARRGG!!! Excuse my Blasphemy! I am sorry oh Great Timpy .. TIMPSON!! Sorry
Great One!!!
All Praise the All knowing Homer Timpson ...&%$@&@#$& uh... Steve....
Hear his Great Word, "Grow up folks!"
Hear the utter wisdom of his Word! All praise!
Nuff said.
Jackson OUT
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Utopia Planetia Starfleet Yards MARS STARDATE RC:44817.8
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Path: ns-mx!iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu!ceres.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!dog.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!crash!benno
From: benno@crash.cts.com (Benno Eichmann)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human,alt.desert-storm,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,alt.activism,alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: "October Surprise" by Barbara Honeker(sp?):PBS: Bush will fall?
Message-ID: <8645@crash.cts.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 08:56:35 GMT
References: <8487@crash.cts.com> <8608@crash.cts.com> <8642@crash.cts.com>
Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA
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Xref: ns-mx soc.rights.human:6358 alt.desert-storm:13925 talk.politics.mideast:24411 talk.politics.misc:35191 misc.headlines:15609 alt.activism:12392 alt.alien.visitors:532
It's hard to descern between world domination by way of Bush's `New World Order'
or global survival at all costs? So much mis-information was passed around,
and now the public is so confused from all manner of, if you will, apathetic
conditionings to the point of mindlessness? Maybe it was initialy for some
purpose of world domination by an elite handful, but now it may be neccessary
for global survival?
I just don't know at this juncture. Where do we really stand now Mr Bush,
CFR, TC, Builderburgers, N.S.A., N.C.I., etc.?
Would any of you insist on a hanging party if those in the real know
came forward with the bloody truth of matters, or would you ask their most
sincere honest help where they have something of honest value to contribute?
Any insider(s), what's the real truth? We may need to work together in the
open on this if we are to have any chance for help in getting out of this
mess(?). ?????
Anyone?
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From: benno@crash.cts.com (Benno Eichmann)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human,alt.desert-storm,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,alt.activism,alt.alien.visitors
Subject: "October Surprise" by Barbara Honeker(sp?):PBS: Bush will fall?
Message-ID: <8642@crash.cts.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 06:49:14 GMT
References: <8487@crash.cts.com> <8608@crash.cts.com>
Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA
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Xref: ns-mx soc.rights.human:6363 alt.desert-storm:13927 talk.politics.mideast:24419 talk.politics.misc:35199 misc.headlines:15615 alt.activism:12404 alt.alien.visitors:533
Did anyone see the exploding bomb on PBS: October Surprise ?
What of the article in the Washington Post just prior to the
fateful show?
And the New York Times(4/17/91) call to action, blue ribbon suggestions?
Might this be a chance to get something going by which many things
might be shaken out of the tree of associations like the Builderburgers
and Chapter 322 related covert activities with connections to N.S.A., etc.?
Maybe this is a time for action, what say you all?
A good briefing can be had by checking out "Behold a Pale Horse" by William
Cooper and some of the many sources he lists in his included references.
I've finally seen a copy, and IT'S NOT full of UFO stuff as some suggest, but
instead a very good all under one cover 500pp fact filled resource/reference
for making some real hard hitting cases for all these topics in these different
areas across the board.
Now might be a good time to act, and knowledge is real power.
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From: benno@crash.cts.com (Benno Eichmann)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human,alt.desert-storm,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,alt.activism,alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: "October Surprise" by Barbara Honeker(sp?):PBS: Bush will fall?
Message-ID: <8644@crash.cts.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 08:40:20 GMT
References: <8487@crash.cts.com> <8608@crash.cts.com> <8642@crash.cts.com>
Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA
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Xref: ns-mx soc.rights.human:6364 alt.desert-storm:13928 talk.politics.mideast:24420 talk.politics.misc:35200 misc.headlines:15616 alt.activism:12405 alt.alien.visitors:534
I might also suggest "America's Secret Establishment" by Antony Sutton as
another work of interest that is well written but not as up to date as
the 1991 pub. Behold a Pale Horse book.
The big problem I'm having is that I find it difficult to envision the
public getting active, let alone being willing to die in large numbers.
So maybe a totalitarian form of New World Order as envisioned by the
Chapter 322 camp and Builderburgers might be required for the survival
of this plnet? The concentration camps and FEMA related mechanics are in
place at this time, and equiped for mass extermination built upon the
lessons gained from the very succesful German WWII experiments.
Would the simple truth and full disclosure result in constructive
actions from the masses..., I doubt it at this time. Check E.O. 12148, etc.
if you wish to see just the surface of some strategic plans already
in place.
Even if the public had clean sources of energy would it really get
into Zero-Growth or negative grow if needed? Opinions?
Did we once try Zero-Growth, what happened?
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From: timpson@shodha.enet.dec.com (Steve Timpson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: RE: Faces of Mars
Message-ID: <2946@shodha.enet.dec.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 15:07:00 GMT
Sender: news@shodha.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 14
In article <671780236.0@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>, Joseph.Jackson@f728.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Joseph Jackson) writes...
>
> Hear the utter wisdom of his Word! All praise!
>
> Nuff said.
>
> Jackson OUT
>
Children will be children.
Who pissed in your Wheaties?
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From: timpson@shodha.enet.dec.com (Steve Timpson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: RE: Faces of Mars
Message-ID: <2947@shodha.enet.dec.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 15:22:22 GMT
Sender: news@shodha.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 18
In article <671780236.0@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>, Joseph.Jackson@f728.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Joseph Jackson) writes...
>
> Hear the utter wisdom of his Word! All praise!
>
> Nuff said.
>
> Jackson OUT
>
I see you had to put in in here twice to attempt to get your
pseudo point across. It is responses like yours that drives the
nail home as to the mental level of those who accept at face
value (without question and reason) that which is presented as
fact with little or no supporting evidence. I am in the process
of looking up some of the sources mentioned in previous postings.
What are you doing blindly following the blind?
The all seeing Carnak has spoken
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From: timpson@shodha.enet.dec.com (Steve Timpson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: Suitable homelands
Message-ID: <2949@shodha.enet.dec.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 15:51:13 GMT
Sender: news@shodha.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 23
In article <671608199.1@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>, Joseph.Jackson@f728.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Joseph Jackson) writes...
> What happens when you reach out further to planets that are thousands of
>light years, even millions of light years away?
>
Since we have yet to detect any planet at all outside of our
solar system your statement is nonsense.
> Spectral analysis would tell us what the planet was like thousands or
>millions of years ago. A little green guy living a few million light years
>away would look at us and wouldn't see a human anywhere.
See previous
>Jackson OUT
Yup! Way out!
The all seeing Carnak 8^)
Steve
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From: timpson@shodha.enet.dec.com (Steve Timpson)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: Faces of Mars
Message-ID: <2948@shodha.enet.dec.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 15:32:39 GMT
Sender: news@shodha.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 1066
In article <2887@shodha.enet.dec.com>, timpson@shodha.enet.dec.com (Steve Timpson) writes...
>
>In article <8509@crash.cts.com>, benno@crash.cts.com (Benno Eichmann) writes...
>>
>>Steve, did the U.S. and Russia successfully send a joint probe to mars
>>before 1970?
>
>Are you directing this question at me? If so the answer is no. I can
>get a article on the subject of the Soviet Mars missions.
>
>Steve T.
Here is that Article. It is copyrighted and you may not reproduce it
without the express permission of the Author. He has given me permission
to post it here.
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THE ROCKY SOVIET ROAD TO MARS
Copyright (c) 1990 by Larry Klaes
In one form or another over the centuries, the human race has
looked to the sky far above Earth for answers to its many questions
and dilemmas. One concept which has long fascinated humans is the
idea that other planets like Earth exist in space, and few have drawn
more attention than the planet Mars. Of all the planets astronomers
could observe through their telescopes, none seemed more like Earth
than the Red Planet. When technological advances made space travel
possible, Mars became a prime focus for finding new answers to human
needs through exploration by the Soviet Union, the first nation to
launch a satellite into space.
Born from the Cold War
In the first decade following the end of World War Two, a new and
strange conflict named the Cold War had emerged. The United States
and Soviet Union had developed growing stockpiles of rockets and
nuclear weapons from the technological spoils of the Second World War.
Since the superpowers realized that rocket-borne nuclear devices could
conceivably destroy themselves and the rest of civilization, they
sought alternative methods to turn other nations towards their
ideological point of view and increase their global strength.
The most signifigant of these methods was through technological
prowess. Space exploration offered the Soviets and Americans one of
the most impressive and least hostile means to accomplish this goal,
while still allowing them to continue producing more of their supplies
of military rockets. Despite initial setbacks, by the late 1950s,
both nations had lofted unmanned satellites into Earth orbit and
towards the Moon. Soon, missions to Earth's natural satellite would
no longer be considered enough to impress other governments.
The First Missions
In October of 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev was at the
United Nations Headquarters in New York City for a meeting with the
General Assembly. Krushchev desperately wanted the Soviet Union to
be able to compete with the more advanced nations in all areas of
development, particularly the United States. The domination of space
and the technology to accomplish this was one of Krushchev's prime
political goals.
The rest of the world also wondered what the Soviets would pull
off this time in the space arena. One year earlier, the unmanned
Soviet probe LUNA 2 became the first spacecraft to impact on the
surface of the Moon while Krushchev was meeting at the UN. The
beaming Soviet Premier presented U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
with a small model of the lunar craft, helping to drive home the idea
that the Soviets were the leaders in the exploration of the Universe.
An even more impressive space coup and a new model were expected
this time.
On the tenth of October, the first direct attempt to reach the
planet Mars was made from the Soviet Tyuratam Space Center (which they
called the Baikonur Cosmodrome), deep in the arid grasslands of the
Kazakhstan Republic. The unmanned Mars probe was launched atop a
MOLNIYA rocket (designated A-2-e by the West) towards an Earth parking
orbit, before being boosted onwards to the Red Planet. Unfortunately,
the Mars craft would reach neither Mars nor even the parking orbit.
A failure in the booster's escape stage sent the vehicle plummeting
back to Earth. A second Mars launch attempt four days later resulted
in a similar fate.
The Soviets never announced the existence of these missions to
the rest of the world, though U.S. intelligence sources did reveal
the failed Mars attempts in 1962. The spacecraft are believed to have
resembled the VENERA 1 probe sent towards the planet Venus one year
later: A domed cylinder flanked by solar panels and an umbrella-
shaped antenna. Had the Soviets' first two Mars craft succeeded,
they would have flown by the planet in May of 1961 (and possibly
impacted), much earlier than any proposed American Mars probes.
It was difficult for Krushchev at the UN. Frustrated at not
having his way with the Assembly, and injured by the failed space
coup, the Soviet Premier raged. At one point, Krushchev took off his
shoe and slammed it against the meeting table, vowing to "bury" the
United States. In the end, Krushchev would return home without either
a political or space victory in hand, taking the rumored models of his
failed Mars craft with him.
There was another rumor of a Soviet attempt at Mars in 1960 which
remained officially secret for almost thirty years. Over the years, a
number of Soviet defectors and informants brought stories to the West
of a terrible catastrophe which had occurred at Tyuratam late in 1960.
According to these sources, there was a hurried third attempt to send
a craft to the Red Planet while the launch "window" between Earth and
Mars was still "open". This plan to placate Krushchev backfired
horribly when the rocket booster exploded on the launch pad during a
rushed repair job, killing hundreds of technicians and specialists in
the vicinity.
The Soviets remained completely silent about this incident until
April of 1989, when an article written by Aleksandr Bolotin in the
Soviet weekly magazine OGONYOK revealed what happened on that fateful
day. Bolotin corroborates that there was indeed an explosion of a
rocket at Tyuratam on October 24, 1960, but it did not carry a craft
to explore the Red Planet. Instead, it was an attempt to launch an
R-16 InterContinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Better known in the
West as the SS-7 SADDLER, the rocket was designed and built by the
Yangel Bureau, headed by Mikhail K. Yangel. The R-16 explosion killed
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of engineers and technicians at the launch
site, including the Soviet official in charge of the rocket project,
Field Marshall Mitrofan Nedelin, Commander in Chief of the Strategic
Rocket Forces. There may have been an actual plan for a third launch
attempt to send an unmanned probe to Mars by the end of 1960 (later
Soviet Venus and Mars probe missions would be launched in threes),
but the implementation of such a project now appears doubtful.
Despite all that had gone wrong with their Mars probes in 1960,
the Soviets were ready to send unmanned spacecraft to the Red Planet
again when the next launch window arrived in 1962. Krushchev had
also obtained another space first in the intervening year by placing
a human in space named Yuri Gagarin. The cosmonaut flew nearly one
full orbit of Earth aboard the VOSTOK 1 spacecraft on April 12, 1961.
This achievment beat the first manned U.S. space mission by almost
one month.
The first of the three Mars probes launched in 1962 was sent into
an Earth parking orbit on October 24. Only half an hour after the
orbital insertion, the rocket stage attached to the probe, which
would have sent the vehicle on to Mars, unexpectedly exploded. The
resulting debris from the destruction sailed on in orbit and soon
headed over the Soviet horizon towards the continental United States.
It was a poor time for such an accident to occur: Far below the
charred remains of the Soviet Mars probe, the world's two superpowers
were engaged in a battle of nuclear and political strength, later to
be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets were placing nuclear
missiles on the island nation of Cuba, their recent ally, which could
strike most U.S. targets in a matter of minutes with little warning.
The U.S. understandably protested this, and President John F. Kennedy
ordered Premier Krushchev to remove the warheads from that region of
the Western Hemisphere. Krushchev initially refused; the threat of a
nuclear war escalated dramatically.
One need only imagine the thoughts of those manning the Ballistic
Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) stations in the Northern
Hemisphere on October 24 when a cloud of unidentified objects were
seen arcing over the northern horizon from the Soviet Union towards
North America. Fortunately for all concerned, the defense computers
quickly determined that the Mars probe remains were not a nuclear
missile attack, and World War Three was averted. Soon after the
incident, Krushchev backed down to Kennedy's demands and eventually
removed his nuclear weapons from Cuban soil.
A second Mars probe was launched from Tyuratam on November 1.
It became the first space vehicle in the series to actually leave
Earth orbit. The Soviets officially announced the craft's existence
and intentions to the rest of the world and designated it MARS 1.
Officials also released pictures and descriptions of the probe: An
893.5-kilogram (1,970-pound) spacecraft consisting of a cylindrical
"bus" 3.3 meters (10.89 feet) long, which housed both scientific
instruments and course correction engines. The bus was flanked on
either side by solar panels which supplied electrical power to the
instruments and a high-gain "umbrella" antenna located on the front
of the bus.
The main objectives of MARS 1 were to study the interplanetary
medium during its journey and to flyby Mars around June 19 of the
following year at a distance of less than eleven thousand kilometers
(6,700 miles). MARS 1's primary task was to photograph the planet's
surface. The craft was also designed to send back measurements on
Mars' magnetic and radiation fields, cosmic radiation, micrometeoroid
impacts, and even indications of organic compounds on the Red Planet
using a "spectroreflexometer".
The mission proceeded well through early 1963. On March 16,
MARS 1 broke the distance record for interplanetary communication by
a spacecraft of almost one hundred million kilometers (sixty million
miles), set just two months earlier by the first successful U.S.
Venus probe, MARINER 2.
Sadly, this was to have been one of MARS 1's last accomplishments.
Several days later, Soviet controllers noted that the craft was having
troubles with its orientation system. When MARS 1 could no longer
keep its communications antenna locked on Earth, all contact was lost.
The Soviets blamed an errant meteoroid which struck the probe and
broke the ground link. Some Western experts, however, blamed the
loss on a faulty attitude control and/or communications system which
had reached its technological design limits. In any event, it was a
dark sign of things to come for the Soviet Mars program.
Three days after MARS 1 had been launched in 1962, the Soviets
placed a third Mars probe into Earth orbit. Like its undesignated
partner, it too failed to leave its parking orbit for the Red Planet,
eventually burning up upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere the next
day. Though this is purely speculation, based on the unmanned Soviet
Venus and Mars missions which were to follow these flights, the two
unsuccessful Mars probes which were to have accompanied MARS 1 may
have been carrying lander capsules designed for direct exploration
of the Martian surface. The Soviets' official explanation of the
destroyed vehicles' goals were that only MARS 1 had been intended
to head off into interplanetary space.
America Joins the Race to Mars
The next good window for launches to Mars took place in late 1964,
and for the first time the Soviet Union was not alone in exploring the
the Red Planet with spacecraft. The United States' new Mars program
called for the launching of two MARINER spacecraft on flyby photo-
graphic missions. The first attempt, MARINER 3, ceased functioning
soon after its launch aboard an ATLAS-AGENA D rocket from the Kennedy
Space Center in Florida on November 5. The protective shroud around
the craft failed to eject after insertion into space as planned.
Unable to open its solar panels to receive energy, the probe's
batteries were soon exhausted. MARINER 3 drifted off into solar
orbit as an inert hunk of metal. The designers of the MARINER series
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California quickly
corrected the shroud problem for its sister probe, MARINER 4, and it
was successfully sent to Mars on November 28.
Two days later, the Soviets launched a single Mars probe with the
generic name of ZOND 2 (Zond is the Russian word for probe). Few
details were released by the Soviets about the craft, though it very
likely had a design similar to MARS 1. There was also speculation in
the West that ZOND 2 carried a capsule lander to study the Martian
surface. This was primarily based on the fact that ZOND 2 seemed to
have been launched to minimize its arrival speed at Mars, thus
reducing the problems of atmospheric entry for a lander. National
prestige also played a role in this speculation. Since ZOND 2 was
scheduled to arrive at Mars after MARINER 4, sending images of the
Martian surface would appear merely redundant in light of the U.S.
effort. An actual soft landing on the planet would certainly upstage
any similar U.S. Mars project by several years.
One device verified by the Soviets aboard ZOND 2 was a set of six
experimental plasma (electromagnetic ion) engines designed to assist
in attitude control, perhaps to resolve the problems encountered by
MARS 1. In spite of this technical innovation, it was noted just days
after launch that ZOND 2's initial power supply was fifty percent
below the expected level. It was theorized that a solar panel on
the craft might not have extended properly. This problem may have
contributed to the loss of communications with ZOND 2 in early May
of 1965, just three months before its estimated flyby of Mars.
There was some concern for a while that ZOND 2 had actually
impacted on the planet, as it was apparently not decontaminated of
Earth micro-organisms before its launch. Western scientists feared
that any bacteria on the probe might "interfere" with any Martian
organisms present. At the least, they thought it might confuse
future missions searching for life into thinking that Earth organisms
possibly deposited by ZOND 2 were native to Mars. Despite these
charges, no impact by the craft on Mars has ever been confirmed.
It is believed that ZOND 2 missed the Red Planet on August 6 by
1,497 kilometers (930 miles).
Scientists also had more immediate concerns regarding Mars
from the information returned by MARINER 4, which flew past the Red
Planet on July 14, 1965 at a distance of 9,844 kilometers (6,118
miles) and returned the first close-up images of the Martian surface
(twenty-two in all). Despite all of their previous evidence and
theories, Mars appeared to be a crater-scarred wasteland like Earth's
Moon. The carbon dioxide atmosphere was far thinner than expected,
the planet's water content and magnetic field were almost non-existant,
and the famed canals were nowhere to be seen in any of the spacecraft
images. Though the news from MARINER 4 was discouraging to those who
had hoped Mars would be more like Earth, it was also realized that the
American spacecraft had imaged only one percent of the entire planet's
surface. It became apparent that the Red Planet would require much
more intensive spacecraft studies before a verdict on its true nature
could be obtained.
Though the Mars launch window had long passed by 1965, the Soviets
sent up another ZOND probe on July 18 of that year. ZOND 3 was a
slightly modified MARS-VENERA vehicle designed to be an engineering
test of spacecraft systems for future Mars and Venus missions. No
doubt this was due in part to the concern over the previous vehicle
failures. It has also been speculated that ZOND 3 was originally
meant to fly with ZOND 2 as the photographic part of a much larger
Mars mission, but technical problems with ZOND 2 pushed ZOND 3's
launch date beyond the favorable window.
ZOND 3 sped past the far side of Earth's Moon on July 20, where it
took the first images of that hemisphere since LUNA 3 in 1959. Soviet
controllers then sent the probe on a trajectory out to the orbit of
Mars. As ZOND 3 sailed outward, it transmitted back its images of the
lunar surface at various distances in a test of the communications
system. ZOND 3 continued to transmit data on interplanetary space
until March of 1966, when it was 153.5 million kilometers (338 million
miles) from Earth. Though ZOND 3 did eventually cross the orbit of
Mars, the craft was too distant from the planet at the time for its
instruments to record any information.
To Touch the Face of Mars
The launch window to Mars for 1967 was passed up by both the
Soviets and the United States. Rather, they concentrated on sending
their planetary spacecraft to gather information on the hellish world
of Venus and prepared to place men on the surface of the Moon. On
a much less visible level, the two superpowers were working on more
ambitious unmanned missions to the Red Planet. While the U.S. was
planning its next series of more sophisticated flyby probes (MARINER 6
and 7) and planet orbiters (MARINER 8 and 9), the Soviets were testing
their next generation of Mars explorers in the atmosphere and in Earth
orbit. Throughout the late 1960s, there were reports of Soviet high-
altitude aircraft drop-testing flight models of a new lander capsule
aeroshell and parachute system designed for a future series of
unmanned Mars surface explorers.
The United States was also making serious plans for the landing
of vehicles on the Martian surface. In October of 1967, a National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project named VOYAGER
was canceled by the U.S. Congress for being too costly. VOYAGER
was designed to send several large lander craft to Mars and Venus,
launched by the massive SATURN 5 rocket booster used to send APOLLO
astronauts to the Moon. NASA immediately began scaling back their
VOYAGER plans, and one year later project VIKING was born. If
everything went well for NASA, the U.S. would have their first
Mars landers outbound for the Red Planet by 1973.
By 1969, there were rumors that the Soviets were ready to unleash
a new series of Mars explorers. These new vehicles supposedly weighed
far more than any previous Mars craft, and thus needed a more powerful
rocket to boost them into interplanetary space. This required the
assistance of the PROTON booster (codenamed D-1-e in the West),
designed by the Bureau of Vladimir N. Chelomei. The probes may have
consisted of a flyby bus which would drop a lander onto the Martian
surface as the bus headed on into an orbit around the Sun. Once
safely on the reddish soil, the lander would then relay the first
surface data and images of the alien world to Soviet controllers
back on Earth.
There were reports of at least two launch attempts to Mars by
the Soviets in March and April of that year, though none apparently
achieved Earth orbit. At the same time, the United States success-
fully lofted MARINER 6 and 7 into space, the latest spacecraft in
the American Mars flyby program. In the months to follow, all of
these Mars craft were to virtually disappear from the public eye,
eclipsed by an event of historical stature.
Humans on Another World
On the evening of Sunday, July 20, 1969, the United States placed
two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, on the surface of the
Moon during the APOLLO 11 lunar mission - the first humans ever to
walk on another world. The American triumph made a critical impact on
the secret Soviet project then underway to beat the U.S. with their
own human explorers on the lunar surface. A final attempt by the
Soviets to steal some of the limelight from APOLLO 11 came when they
attempted to deposit an unmanned craft named LUNA 15 on the Moon. The
probe, which would have collected and returned soil samples to Earth
ahead of the American effort, failed in its objective when LUNA 15
crashed into the lunar dust.
As if a manned lunar landing were not enough, within days of
APOLLO 11's return to Earth, MARINER 6 and 7 flew by Mars. They
returned more details on the planet than had been possible to gather
by MARINER 4. The Mars revealed to scientists by the pair did seem
more intriguing than what was shown four years earlier, but the extra
information still did not lift the stigma of a "dead" world left by
the previous mission.
In the heady weeks following the success of APOLLO, there was
serious talk at NASA to land men on Mars within twenty years as the
next goal of the U.S. space program. The Soviets responded that they
had never intended to put cosmonauts on the Moon. Instead, they were
concentrating on placing space stations in Earth orbit and landing
unmanned vehicles on the lunar surface and the nearby planets.
Within two years, the Soviets would achieve these new space goals.
The New Generation
The first year of the 1970s bore witness to the closest approach
of the Red Planet in its solar orbit to Earth since 1956. Fifteen
years earlier, neither the Soviets nor the U.S. had lofted even a
single satellite into orbit around Earth; now the two nations were
launching their most ambitious assaults yet on the fourth world from
the Sun.
The U.S. made the first launch attempt with MARINER 8 on May 9.
It was designed to orbit Mars with MARINER 9 and examine the entire
surface of Mars for at least ninety days. Instead, the spacecraft
ended up in the Atlantic Ocean when an autopilot fault in the CENTAUR
stage of its ATLAS-CENTAUR rocket booster sent the craft wildly off
course.
The Soviets had equally bad luck the next day. What might have
been officially designated a MARS probe instead became COSMOS 419 when
the vehicle failed to leave its parking orbit around Earth. The probe
was subsequently destroyed upon re-entering the atmosphere on May 12.
Success was finally achieved nine days later when the Soviet MARS 2
spacecraft escaped Earth's gravitational well. It was followed on May
28 by a twin named MARS 3. The U.S. rounded out the Mars launches two
days after MARS 3 with MARINER 9, which also found its way on to the
Red Planet.
MARS 2 and 3 were more advanced than any Soviet Mars spacecraft
developed before. Weighing 4,650 kilograms (10,250 pounds) each, the
MARS craft carried 450-kilogram (990-pound) landers to photograph and
examine the Martian surface. The lander design was based on that of
the LUNA 9 and 13 Moon probes of 1966: A sphere kept upright by four
metal "petals" which opened around the lander's base after touchdown.
The crafts' main buses contained rocket thrusters designed to brake
the probes for insertion into orbit around Mars, where they would
serve both as scientific stations and orbital relays for the landers'
signals back to Earth. Even the project's design team was of a new
generation, averaging less than thirty years in age. The team was
supervised by veteran mission specialists.
Although launched from Earth last, MARINER 9 had taken a shorter
flight path and arrived at Mars on November 14. It became the first
spacecraft to orbit another planet. MARS 2 came on the scene November
27, followed by MARS 3 two days into the following month.
As the space vessels assembled in orbit in preparation for
wresting many of the secrets from this small world, Mars was to
try to hide itself from human scrutiny once last time. During the
months that the Soviet and American probes were traveling towards
the Red Planet, astronomers on Earth noted that a major dust storm
was brewing up on Mars. By the time the spacecraft had arrived in
Martian orbit, the dust storm had engulfed the entire planet,
obscuring almost every surface feature from the view of the probes'
electronic eyes. MARINER 9 waited out the dust storm to begin
its primary tasks. MARS 2 and 3 had no such luxury. Due to design
limitations, the Soviet probes had to release their landers before
injecting themselves into Mars orbit; they could not wait for the
raging dust storm to end.
After being ejected from the orbiter buses, the landers were to
enter the thin Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds. The craft
would be protected from heat friction with the air by a surrounding
aeroshield. Once past this critical phase of the descent, a parachute
would be released to slow the craft even further, followed by the
ejection of the shield. Just before touchdown, the MARS landers would
fire retrorockets to cushion the landing impact to a survivable
velocity. On the surface, the landers' metal "petals" would then open
outward to provide balance, and the craft would immediately start to
relay a panoramic view of their surroundings to their orbiting buses
for transmission to Earth. The landers would then carry out various
measurements of the immediate environment until their batteries were
exhausted. One mission study which was not conducted by the landers
was the search for life on Mars. Dr. Lev Mukhin, chief of the
Laboratory of Exobiology of the Soviet Institute of Space Research,
deemed such experiments as "too complex".
Whether because of the dust storm or mechanical problems, MARS 2's
surface mission was cut drastically short. The lander was ejected
on November 27 and descended through Mars' turbulent atmosphere as
planned; however, when the moment of touchdown arrived, only silence
was received on Earth. The MARS 2 lander apparently crashed in the
southern hemisphere of Mars in the western end of Hellas Planitia,
a dust-filled basin with few impact craters. Though no data was
returned from the lander, it did become the first human-made vehicle
known to reach the surface of Mars. The lander also deposited a
pennant displaying the Soviet Coat of Arms, which the probe carried
in commemoration of the event. The MARS 2 bus subsequently went into
an orbit ranging in altitude from 1,380 to 25,000 kilometers (860 to
15,500 miles), circling the planet once every eighteen hours.
Initially, MARS 3 had better luck than its counterpart. Arriving
in orbit on December 2, the lander was released from the main bus
towards Mars and plunged through the wind-swept dust and sand at
supersonic speeds. Three minutes later, the lander successfully
touched down in a heavily cratered plain near the northern rim of an
ancient crater named Ptolemaeus, located in the southern hemisphere.
Ninety seconds after the historic touchdown, the craft's timer
mechanism ordered a panoramic imaging scan of the lander's
surroundings; but just twenty seconds into the scan, the signals
suddenly ceased. A partial picture was returned to Earth, but it
"did not reveal any noticeable difference in the contrast of details",
according to a Soviet report. For almost a full week after the
incident, Soviet controllers tried to regain the lander's signal,
but the effort would eventually prove futile.
At first the signal loss of the MARS 3 lander was blamed on the
global dust storm as the cause for the probe's demise. The vehicle
may have been saturated with fine sand, or knocked over by strong
winds. Soviet space scientists M. Y. Marov and G. I. Petrov later
announced that the MARS 3 orbiter may have been at fault, failing
to continue transmitting its lander's information to Earth at the
critical time, due to an error in the main bus telemetry system.
With the MARS lander missions now permanently defunct, Soviet
controllers concentrated on the scientific studies made by the
orbiters. Photographing the planet's surface proved frustrating, as
the dust storm continued to blot out most Martian features through
early 1972. After several weeks the imaging part of the mission was
given secondary status, while MARS 2 and 3 concentrated on taking
measurements of the Martian atmosphere and surface. The orbiters
discovered atomic hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere. The
average temperature on the surface ranged from thirteen degrees
Celsius (55.4 degrees Fahrenheit) at noon to -110 degrees Celsius
(-230 degrees Fahrenheit) at night. Portions of the planet's night
side were found to be twenty to twenty-five degrees warmer than some
of their immediate surroundings. Atmospheric pressure on the ground
was recorded at 5.5 to 6 millibars (by comparison, air pressure on
Earth averages 1,013 millibars at sea level), and water vapor was
scarce. The orbiters were subsequently turned off in August of 1972.
Despite the problems encountered with the landers, MARS 2 and 3 did
become the first Soviet spacecraft to orbit the Red Planet for study
and deposit landers on its surface while still in communication with
Earth.
By January of 1972, the incredible dust storm finally began to
settle down across Mars, and surface features were slowly becoming
visible. The lone U.S. orbiter, MARINER 9, began to record details
on the face of Mars in earnest; what it found erased the concept of
a "dead" planet, which had been held by most scientists since the
visit of MARINER 4 seven years earlier.
While Mars may have been smaller than Earth overall, many of its
geological features rivaled anything its larger neighbor possessed.
MARINER 9 discovered gargantuan volcanoes in the Red Planet's Amazonis
Planitia region, the largest of which was later named Olympus Mons.
Towering twenty-five kilometers (fifteen miles) over the Martian plain
it occupied, Olympus Mons covered an area equivalent to the state of
Nebraska. Another amazing feature disclosed by MARINER 9 was a vast
canyon system whose only equivalent on Earth were the deep trenches
of the Pacific Ocean. It was named Valles Marineris, Valley of the
Mariner, after its mechanical discoverer.
Mars' two small moons, Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror), were
also imaged in detail by MARINER 9 for the first time. Discovered
by American astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877, they were named after the
mythical horses which drew the chariot of Mars, the Roman god of war.
Both moons appeared as dark, potato-shaped bodies less than twenty-two
kilometers (fifteen miles) across. This information furthered the
theory that Mars captured Phobos and Deimos as wandering planetoids
at some point in the distant past.
While the canals of Mars did not appear in the MARINER 9 images,
they were replaced by the finding of many natural channels and river
beds. These were formed by the flow of water over the Martian surface
long ago in the planet's history. A new view of Mars as a geologically
and biologically active world sprung from the year-long efforts of the
orbiter. This gave the people working on the VIKING lander project,
now scheduled for launch in late 1975, renewed hope that their goal
of finding life on the Red Planet would be a success.
The Soviet Assault of Mars
The Soviets now found themselves in an even tighter race against
time to try and beat the impressive potentials of the American VIKING
probes. There was only one launch window to the Red Planet after MARS
2 and 3 and before VIKING's scheduled launch, the summer of 1973. It
was not as favorable as the one two years earlier. The PROTON booster
would not be able to carry a combined orbiter and lander craft in this
window. The weight of such a vehicle setup would be too "steep" for
the rocket's power limits, and a more powerful booster could not be
developed in time.
Undaunted, the Soviets split the mission between four probes,
which in most respects were identical to their 1971 predecessors.
MARS 4 and 5 would orbit the planet and relay not only scientific
data but telemetry from the landers, which would be deposited on the
Martian surface by MARS 6 and 7. The buses which carried the landers
would then sail on into solar orbit after delivering their loads.
MARS 4 was launched first on July 21, 1973, followed by MARS 5 on
July 25. MARS 6 was sent aloft the following month, on August 5,
with MARS 7 bringing up the rear four days later.
Being the first of the series launched, MARS 4 also arrived at
Mars ahead of the rest on February 10, 1974. Instead of going into
orbit as planned, the probe's main braking engine failed to fire its
rockets. MARS 4 drifted past the planet at an altitude of 2,200
kilometers (1,320 miles) before heading off into an unscheduled orbit
around the Sun. MARS 4 did relay back to Earth a number of images of
the planet's surface as it flew past Mars into interplanetary space.
MARS 5 reached the Red Planet just two days after its sister
orbiter, successfully firing its breaking engines for insertion
into orbit. The probe made one revolution around Mars in just over
twenty-four hours. In addition to its original scientific duties,
MARS 5 now had to serve as the communications relay for both MARS
landers, since MARS 4 was no longer available to do the job for MARS
6. Together with MARS 4, MARS 5 took sixty images of the Martian
surface, comparable in quality to those taken by MARINER 9 two years
earlier. MARS 5 also gave scientists the first serious evidence that
most of the soil on Mars was bright orange-red in color (the color
filters on MARINER 9 had malfunctioned very early in its mission).
MARS 5 also found an ozone layer thirty kilometers (eighteen miles)
above the planet's surface. In addition, the probe revealed that the
outermost layer of the atmosphere consisted of atomic hydrogen twenty
thousand kilometers (twelve thousand miles) above the planet. To
date, MARS 5 has been the only Soviet Mars probe which accomplished
all of its planned tasks.
Almost one month after MARS 5 began its study of the Red Planet,
the first of the flyby/lander probes, MARS 7, arrived at Mars. The
flyby bus ejected its lander towards the planet on March 9, aiming for
what may have been the eastern rim of Argyre Planitia near the crater
Galle. Due to an apparent fault in either its solid-propellant motor
or attitude control system, the MARS 7 lander missed the entire planet
by 1,300 kilometers (780 miles) and drifted off into deep space. The
flyby bus was able to take its planned measurements of Mars before
joining its failed lander in solar orbit.
The second flyby/lander, MARS 6, was the last of the set to reach
Mars, successfully deploying its lander on March 12. The lander
performed as designed during its descent towards the surface, relaying
back to Earth the first direct atmospheric readings of Mars, which
seemed to indicate a high concentration of argon (this would later be
proven false). Just twenty seconds away from the planned touchdown
in the southern region of the heavily cratered Margaritifer Sinus,
signals from the lander suddenly ceased without warning. The cause
of the MARS 6 lander's transmission failure would remain a mystery
for over a decade. In recent years, however, it has been conjectured
that the lander was destroyed when it inadvertently slammed into the
Martian plain while descending at an unplanned horizontal velocity of
several hundred kilometers per hour.
The VIKING Has Landed
While the MARS 4-7 series did accomplish a number of important
tasks at Mars, it failed to take away the glamour and scientific gains
which were to come from the United States' VIKING mission. When the
VIKING 1 and 2 probes were launched from Cape Canaveral in the late
summer of 1975, many Western space experts assumed the Soviets would
try again for Mars around the same time; however, no spacecraft bound
for the Red Planet left Tyuratam that year. The VIKING craft sailed
on unaccompanied towards their destined world.
VIKING 1 arrived first at Mars on June 19, 1976, becoming the
fifth spacecraft to orbit the Red Planet. After a month of scanning
for a suitable landing site, the VIKING orbiter module eventually set
the lander down on the western slopes of Chryse Planitia, where it
became the first truly successful Mars lander. VIKING 2 arrived on
the scene several months later and successfully placed its lander in
Utopia Planitia, almost seven thousand kilometers (4,200 miles) away.
The VIKING landers soon had a number of surprises in store for
the mission controllers back at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Early
images from the landers revealed that the Martian daytime sky was
pinkish in color, not dark blue as originally thought, due to sunlight
reflecting off the reddish dust particles in the planet's thin
atmosphere. Both landing sites were revealed to be relatively flat
and literally rusted deserts, strewn with boulders of various sizes in
every direction. The weather was bitterly cold by the standards of
most Earth life, and nearly void of any trace of humidity.
The VIKING landers' primary task of searching for life on the Red
Planet also held surprises for the mission scientists, but not quite
in the fashion they had anticipated. The results from the air and
soil samples placed in the landing crafts' automatic biology labs
were more perplexing than revealing. Some scientists argued that the
reactions in the probes' labs were organic in origin, while others
claimed them to be the result of inorganic substances in the soil
chemistry. In the end, the centuries-old debate over whether or not
life existed on Mars would fail to be resolved with VIKING. More
sophisticated examinations would be needed. A mission to secure
and return samples of the Martian soil to Earth was considered by
planetary scientists to be most ideal.
During this time, something happened to the future plans for
Mars with both the Soviet Union and United States. The Soviets ceased
all Mars missions for over a decade after 1974, concentrating their
planetary exploration efforts instead on Venus, where they had already
shown a great deal of success. Though Venus was a far harsher world
to examine and land on than Mars, it came much closer to Earth in
its solar orbit than the Red Planet ever did. The launch windows
to Venus also occurred with greater frequency. This allowed the
Soviets to have a shorter mission time for their probes, few of which
lasted as long as their American counterparts. The Soviets were also
busy with their manned SALYUT space stations in Earth orbit, which
gave Soviet scientists continually increasing data on the effects of
long-term space flights on humans. The information was vital for a
manned expedition to Mars, which would require several years for a
successful round trip.
Soon after the success of the VIKING probes, the U.S. talked about
plans for constructing an unmanned Mars rover and soil sample return
mission, scheduled for launch in the 1980s; however, a dwindling NASA
budget and increased concentration of funds and other resources
towards the manned Space Shuttle program pushed these Mars projects
even further into the future. By the end of the decade, all U.S.
planetary probe missions were affected. After the launch of the
PIONEER Venus spacecraft in 1978, there would not be another new
American mission to the planets for almost eleven years. The plans
for a manned journey to Mars so vividly described in the 1960s were
left to a vague future time.
Revived Ambitions for the Red Planet
The Soviets were not completely idle with their Mars program.
By the early 1980s, the Space Research Institute of the Soviet Academy
of Sciences, lead by its director, Roald Z. Sagdeyev, were developing
plans for a whole new series of robot Mars explorers. The ultimate
goal of these efforts were to lead to manned expeditions. As the
decade progressed, new spacecraft designs were emerging from the
Soviet Union, sometimes being revealed to the rest of the world far
in advance of their launchings. This was something almost unthink-
able only a few years earlier.
Much of this behavior came about from the changes in the Soviet
political climate, brought on by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Like Krushchev, Gorbachev wanted to bring the Soviet Union up to the
standards of the modern world. Unlike his predecessor two decades
earlier, Gorbachev decided to follow this path by frequently working
with other nations, rather than treating them as adversaries.
One of the results of this new political climate was the PHOBOS
program, whose existence was announced in 1983, five years before
its scheduled launch. PHOBOS was ambitious in many new areas. Two
6,220-kilogram (13,684-pound) probes were to be sent to study the
Martian moon Phobos, as well as Mars itself and possibly its smaller
moon, Deimos. The craft would drop several small landers on the dark,
cratered face of Phobos, a first in the history of space exploration.
Studying the Martian moons made a great deal of sense from the point
of view for human exploration. The satellites' close proximities to
Mars and low masses could serve as excellent "space stations" for
crews preparing to land on the Red Planet.
The two PHOBOS spacecraft were to be launched from the Soviet
Union in the summer of 1988 and go into orbit around Mars early the
following year. The orbiters would wait several months, studying Mars
and its moons, while they achieved the proper trajectory to flyby
Phobos at the incredibly low altitude of fifty meters (165 feet).
At this point that the orbiters would drop off three landers (one
from PHOBOS 1 and two from its sister craft), two of which would
anchor themselves with a harpoon into the dusty soil of the small
moon. The other lander would use a metal bar to move across Phobos'
surface by "hopping" until its batteries ran out of power. The
landers would send images and information about the moon to their
orbiters, which would relay the data back to Earth.
The United States would play a vital role in the communications
aspect of the mission by using NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) of
radio telescopes to pick up PHOBOS' weak signals during their
missions, just as the Jodrell Bank radio telescope in Great Britain
had done for the Soviets in their Mars missions two decades before.
There was also a variety of scientific equipment from over a dozen
other nations onboard the probes. The complexities and international
cooperation of the mission were meant to be a sign of the great things
to come in the Soviets' renewed ambitions towards the Red Planet.
PHOBOS Heads to Mars
PHOBOS 1 left the launch pad at Tyuratam on July 7, 1988, atop a
PROTON rocket, followed by PHOBOS 2 on July 12. Like the Mars probes
sent before them, the PHOBOS craft conducted studies of the Sun and
interplanetary environment while in transit towards the Red Planet.
On August 31, PHOBOS 1 was being prepared for an important
international solar experiment. During one of the regular
communication sessions with the probe, a command message with one
character accidentally omitted was sent to the craft. This seemingly
minor incident quickly snowballed as PHOBOS 1 was subsequently given
a computer command to shut off its attitude control system. The
resulting error caused the probe to begin tumbling, aiming its
solar panels away from the Sun. Power in the spacecraft dropped
dramatically until it could no longer function, and communications
ceased. Despite several days of intense efforts by the Soviets to
re-establish contact, PHOBOS 1 was permanently silent.
Mission officials became extremely cautious about ensuring the
continued functioning of PHOBOS 2, as it was now the only PHOBOS
spacecraft left to carry out the mission objectives; however, even
their pampering was not enough to keep PHOBOS 2 from developing
troubles of its own. As the probe neared Mars, the main fifty watt
transmitter aboard the craft malfunctioned, leaving only the five watt
backup to keep PHOBOS 2 in touch with Earth. The main bus cameras
and several scientific instruments also malfunctioned along the way,
though they were later corrected by the time PHOBOS 2 went into Mars
orbit on January 29, 1989. For the next two months, the craft spent
its time examining Mars and Phobos, while adjusting its altitude above
the planet to match that of its target moon. Placement of the two
landers on the surface of Phobos was scheduled to occur around April 7.
On March 27, almost two months after PHOBOS 2 was placed in orbit
around the Red Planet, controllers ordered the craft to orient itself
to take photographs of Phobos. Since the probe's main antenna was not
on a separate swivel platform from the orbiter, the entire craft had
to be turned away from Earth while the picture set was being taken.
It would then reorient itself to transmit the images to Earth.
Instead, the technical problems which have haunted the Soviet Mars
missions since their beginning caught up with PHOBOS 2. The orbiter
turned away for the imaging, but did not turn back as planned. For
two hours after the mishap, Soviet controllers tried to raise the
craft. They were rewarded for thirteen minutes when faint signals
were received from the probe, but soon after the signals disappeared,
PHOBOS 2 was not heard from again. It was surmised that, like its
sister probe, PHOBOS 2 began to tumble when contact with Earth was
lost, and the craft eventually shut down when its solar panels moved
away from direct sunlight. Ironically, the orbit of PHOBOS 2 might
inadvertently cause the probe to someday become the first human-made
vehicle to reach the surface of the Martian moon, though certainly
not in the manner it was intended.
Two main theories quickly arose as to the cause of PHOBOS 2's
permanent silence. Perhaps some debris, a meteor or even the probe's
jettisoned propulsion module, had struck the spacecraft, disorienting
it and pointing the antenna away from Earth. The attitude control
system (possibly a faulty gyroscope) might also have malfunctioned
when the craft turned away from Earth to photograph its target moon,
and then could not aim the spacecraft back at its planet of origin.
Project officials have since come to believe that an onboard computer
may have had either an internal malfunction or been affected by a
power supply problem.
Another contribution to the ultimate failure of PHOBOS 2 may
have come from the revelation of a lack of overall cooperation between
the spacecraft's builders and the mission scientists. Such divisions
will need to be removed if future Mars projects are to be successful,
particularly when other nations (and human life) are involved.
Though the Soviets officially wrote off PHOBOS 2 on April 18,
1989, the mission was not without its successes. The first spacecraft
to explore the Red Planet since the accidental shutdown of the VIKING
1 lander in November of 1982, PHOBOS 2 made a number of important
studies with a variety of instruments at its disposal in the two
months it functioned high above Mars. One experiment named FREGAT
used Charged Coupled Device (CCD) images of Phobos to reveal that
the moon is uniformly gray in color and recorded areas missed by
the VIKING orbiters ten years earlier. A scanning radiometer
designated TERMOSKAN made infrared images of the surface of Mars,
indicating previously unknown warm and cool regions of the planet.
Bolder Missions, Smarter Machines
Before the PHOBOS probes were sent on their way, the Soviets had
outlined an ambitious program of Mars missions, leading up to a manned
landing by the year 2015. While the exploration timetables have since
been readjusted, particularly with the manned missions, most of the
unmanned projects are still intact in one form or the other. Even the
United States is showing an interest in studying Mars again, both for
scientific purposes as well as human exploration and colonization.
The best defined of the Soviets' future projects for Mars, and so
far the only one officially approved, is currently called MARS 1994.
The project is similar in scope to the earlier Soviet VEGA mission,
successfully launched in December of 1984 to explore the planet Venus
with balloon-borne probes and landers. If the mission is successful,
it should provide the first comprehensive understanding of nearly all
aspects of the Martian environment, which is crucial to the success
of the projects which may follow it.
MARS 1994 will consist of two improved PHOBOS class vehicles,
which will be launched towards the Red Planet in November of 1994 for
arrival into Mars orbit the following October. Once the orbiters are
prepared, they will deploy a series of small penetrators and one
balloon probe each. The penetrators would lodge themselves in various
areas of the Martian surface, unhampered by any rough terrain due to
their rugged construction. These surface stations would relay seismic
and possibly meteorological data to Earth using the Soviet orbiters
and the United States' MARS OBSERVER probe, which should already be
in orbit by the time MARS 1994 arrives.
Several kilometers above this surface activity, the balloon probes
will be sampling the thin Martian atmosphere and using television
cameras to take high-resolution images of the thousands of kilometers
of land they will be able to study as they drift overhead. The
twenty-one meter (seventy-foot) tall French-made balloons will be kept
suspended in the air by the Sun-warmed gas inside them. At night the
balloons will descend to the surface when the temperature cools, where
the probe instruments will be protected from touching the ground by an
American-designed "snake" construct suspended beneath them, which will
also serve as a soil analyzer.
The balloon probes should be able to cover many interesting sites
each day for at least ten days, lifting off each morning after sunrise
and imaging the Martian surface, before settling down in the evening
hundreds of kilometers away. Eventually the gas will leak out of the
balloons to the point where their instrument packages will become too
heavy to loft any further.
Should MARS 1994 succeed, the Soviets may head back for the moon
Phobos again several years later, this time going several steps
further with the mission goals set for PHOBOS 1 and 2. Two PHOBOS-
type craft would be sent off into space in 1996-1997, one to the
small Martian moon, the other to investigate a number of planetoids
beyond the orbit of Mars, including Vesta. The Phobos probe would
drop a lander on Phobos to analyze the moon, and perhaps even return
soil samples of the tiny world to Earth - the first acquisition of
material from another planet's moon.
The year 1997 might also see the first automatic Soviet rover on
the surface of Mars. Originally intended as part of the MARS 1994
mission, the rover vehicle would roam across the red sands of Mars,
where it would conduct studies of the planet for up to five years.
While exploring other worlds with unmanned rovers is nothing new for
the Soviets, as they proved on Earth's Moon with the LUNAKHOD 1 and
2 missions from 1970 to 1973, the Mars rovers will have to be far
more sophisticated in order to function well on the Red Planet.
Distance may be the rover's most serious detriment to its mission
goals. Since radio signals travel at the speed of light (300,000
kilometers per second, or 186,000 miles per second), a round-trip
message between Earth and Mars takes up to sixteen minutes. If an
automatic rover came to the edge of a Martian cliff or was blocked by
large boulders, it might take too long for a human controller on Earth
to tell the rover's computer "brain" what to do, and the result could
be a smashed vehicle at the bottom of a ravine. Mars rovers will need
computer guidance which can function autonomously of Earth to be able
to recognize such hazards and avoid them.
The last launch window for Mars in the Twentieth Century may see
the greatest outburst of international robotic exploration since the
MARS 2-3 and MARINER 9 missions in 1971-1972. The United States has
outlined plans to send a small armada of spacecraft to examine the Red
Planet in 1998 (though the missions may be moved up to 2003). Using
a series of rovers to collect air and soil samples at various sites
around the planet, the vehicles would deliver the precious material
to return craft, which would lift off from Mars and carry the soil to
scientists on Earth. If the rovers failed to function properly, the
main lander would still have the ability to scoop up some soil at its
touchdown site for return to Earth. Around the same time, the Soviets
have devised their own plans to launch a Mars lander for retrieving
surface samples. The two nations may cooperate in this project and
share in the various procedures for conducting the sample return, but
no formal plans have yet been drawn.
Humans on Mars
Humanity's future plans for our neighboring world grow rather
hazy at the approach of the Twenty-First Century. For decades the
Soviet Union and United States have talked about sending people to
explore and live on the Red Planet; however, despite all the numerous
plans by serious space advocates and engineering groups, the goal
of humans on Mars has yet to come to fruition.
Early in the 1980s, the Soviets were quite ambitious about
starting Martian colonies within forty years, after an extensive
series of unmanned scouting missions. Recent economic problems in
a rapidly changing government and society have forced the Soviets to
concentrate much of their finances and energies elsewhere. While the
idea of cosmonauts on Mars has not vanished, it no longer holds quite
the high priority it once did. To keep the program from disappearing,
the Soviets have discussed cooperating on a joint manned Mars mission
with the United States.
The U.S. may have other ideas, however. The concept of landing
astronauts on Mars, virtually abandoned while men were still walking
on the surface of the Moon, received new life on the twentieth
anniversary of the APOLLO 11 lunar landing. At ceremonies in
Washington, D.C., honoring the astronauts who first journied to the
lunar surface, President George Bush outlined the first major U.S.
space policy since John F. Kennedy announced the APOLLO missions in
1961. President Bush called for NASA to finish constructing and
activate the first American space station in Earth orbit since SKYLAB,
a far more sophisticated complex named FREEDOM. This would then lead
to permanent lunar colonies, followed by manned missions to Mars at
some undetermined time in the next century.
Grand as this plan is, it has left out some key details. Unlike
APOLLO, no specific deadline was stated, nor was any concrete mention
of how the projects would be conducted or where the vast amounts of
money which would be needed to complete them would come from. Most
distressing of all, no cooperation with the Soviets or any other
nation was mentioned. The reality of space exploration and coloni-
zation is that the further we travel and the more complex our efforts
towards such programs become, the less feasible it will be for any
single nation to go it alone.
No one nation has all the resources required to settle space
without some assistance from other countries. While it would not
be impossible for either the Soviet Union nor the United States to
send several manned expeditions to the Red Planet without needing the
services of the other, further missions on Mars will become almost
impractical without cooperation. The long-term scientific, techno-
logical, and political benefits both nations would receive from such
an endeavor should far outweigh any immediate national prestige going
the task alone would accomplish. Nations have learned to work and
live together on the forbidding continent of Antarctica for years now,
in conditions which are rather similar to Mars. Existing in space
demands cooperation in order to survive and thrive, just as it does
at Earth's most remote regions.
It is quite conceivable that humans will be walking on Mars and
even setting up the first permanent colonies there by the middle of
the Twenty-First Century. It cannot be done, however, unless the
spacefaring nations first solidify and intensify their unmanned
explorations of the Red Planet. Much as we have learned about it
since those early probes flew by the planet in the first decades of
the Space Age, they have literally just scratched the surface of the
only planet in our solar system which even comes close to resembling
our Earth.
The United States and Soviet Union can best begin to learn how to
create successful joint manned Mars expeditions by sharing their space
technology and previous experience with the variety of new orbiters,
aircraft, rovers, and sample return vehicles planned for the 1990s and
2000s. These unmanned craft will greatly help to smooth the way for
those first living explorers who will follow, not to mention assist
science in understanding how Earth both came to be and continues to
exist. We will also receive the highest informational return if these
projects are designed by a variety of experts from all over the world
working together.
Bibliography:
Blamont, Jacques, "Exploring Mars by Balloon", THE PLANETARY
REPORT, The Planetary Society, May/June 1987, pages 8-10.
Boston, Penelope J. (Editor), THE CASE FOR MARS, "A Retrospec-
tive Look at the Soviet Union's Efforts to Explore Mars", by
Saunders B. Kramer, pages 269-279, American Astronautical
Society, 81-250, San Diego, California, 1981.
Davies, Merton E., and Bruce C. Murray, THE VIEW FROM SPACE:
PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF THE PLANETS, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1971. ISBN 0-231-03557-8
Friedman, Louis D., "The Mars Balloon", THE PLANETARY REPORT,
The Planetary Society, September/October 1988, pages 7-11.
Gatland, Kenneth, ROBOT EXPLORERS, The MacMillan Company, New
York, 1972. ISBN 0-7137-0573-6
Hart, Douglas, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOVIET SPACECRAFT, Exeter
Books, New York, 1987. ISBN 0-671-08932-3
Johnson, Nicholas L., HANDBOOK OF SOVIET LUNAR AND PLANETARY
EXPLORATION, Volume 47 Science and Technology Series, American
Astronautical Society, San Diego, California, 1979.
Johnson, Nicholas L., THE SOVIET YEAR IN SPACE 1988, Teledyne
Brown Engineering, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1989.
Miles, Frank, and Nicholas Booth, RACE TO MARS: THE MARS FLIGHT
ATLAS, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, 1988.
ISBN 0-06-016005-5
Oberg, James E., RED STAR IN ORBIT, Random House, Inc., New York,
1981. ISBN 0-394-51429-7
Oberg, James E., UNCOVERING SOVIET DISASTERS: EXPLORING THE
LIMITS OF GLASNOST, Random House, Inc., New York, 1988.
ISBN 0-394-56095-7
Smith, Arthur, PLANETARY EXPLORATION: THIRTY YEARS OF UNMANNED
SPACE PROBES, Patrick Stephens Limited, Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire, England, 1988. ISBN 0-85059-915-6
Wilson, Andrew (Editor), INTERAVIA SPACE DIRECTORY 1989-90,
Jane's Publishing, Inc., New York, 1989.
Wilson, Andrew, SOLAR SYSTEM LOG, Jane's Publishing, Inc., New
York, 1987. ISBN 0-7106-0444-0
Notes:
My speculations on the true intents of the MARS 1, MARS 1962A-B,
and ZOND 2-3 missions come from private conversations with Andrew
J. LePage, a member of the Boston Group for the Study of the Soviet
Space Program, Krasnaya Orbita. I am also a member of this recently
formed group.
The speculation on the demise of MARS 6 was relayed to me by
Jonathan McDowell, the founder of Krasnaya Orbita, based on a Soviet
report read by him.
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