When you purchase through contact on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
It ’s easy to forget there was animation trust to be on Mars 60 year ago .
Before the Mariner flybys in the 1960s , scientists thought Mars had piddle and life , even if it was just some variety of plantlike lichen .
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope snapped this shot of Mars on Aug. 26, 2003, when the Red Planet was 34.7 million miles from Earth. The picture was taken just 11 hours before Mars made its closest approach to us in 60,000 years.
" Mars ' spectrum , its color in the penny-pinching infrared , mimic that of flora . Back in the ' 50s and ' 60s , they concluded that was evidence of chlorophyll , and Mars had vegetation , " said Josh Bandfield , a Mars expert and global scientist at the University of Washington .
And if there were plants conceive to be living on the planet , well , it was n’t so far - fetched to inventinvading aliensin pop polish , whether they were evil nous accountant ( " Invaders from Mars " ) or goofy intruders with particular genetical defects ( " Mars need Women " ) . Thanks toNASA , which has yet to findlife on Mars , in present day it ’s humans who brave space , set ashore on a exanimate desert . From pulp fabrication to literary thrillers , vary scientific knowledge of Mars has regulate the planet ’s position in art .
For scientist , dreams of lifespan on Mars persist : When the Curiosity wanderer land Sunday , Aug. 5 , at 10:30 p.m. PDT ( 1:30 a.m. EDT , 0530 GMT),it will taste to determineif Mars could support microbic biography . [ Full reportage : Mars Curiosity Landing ]
But wanting small green men , what drive our culture ’s fascination with Mars ?
Mars ' mystique
" There was just enough of a possibility that Mars might be able to support an levelheaded population that made it fascinating for Mass of the great unwashed , " said Bob Crossley , emeritus prof of English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and author of the book " Imagining Mars : A Literary History " ( Wesleyan , 2011 ) .
Yet Crossley , who is old enough to remember the earned run average ofMars life , said there is more to the major planet ’s mystique . " Somewhere deeply in my own psyche , and perchance for other people as well , there is a desire for another macrocosm , " he said . " For me , the deep meaning of Mars is it represents some variety of longing for something outside ourselves , something outside our own world . "
As one of our faithful and most familiar neighbors , the Red Planet has served as the reference of legends since the first fibber catch some Z’s under the star topology . With its 24.6 - hour day and snowy pivotal caps , Mars is really the only place that bet foretell for life — whether alien or an outstation for man . In mod time , that make believe it a utter slating for allegory about human behavior , from the recently pass away sci - fi author and distance visionaryRay Bradbury ’s critiquesof American culture to Kim Stanley Robinson ’s sci - fi books on the bionomic and sociological sustainability on Mars . [ 5 Mars Myths & Misconceptions ]
Our interest in the preceding century has waxed and waned with the planet ’s propinquity to Earth , said Bill Sheehan , a psychiatrist , unpaid astronomer and author of the rule book " Mars : The Lure of the Red Planet " ( Prometheus Books , 2001 ) .
A nigh approach in 1956 coincided with fears of communism . During the fifties , America was swept up in anti - communist paranoia provoke by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un - American Activities . " The increasing pastime in Mars , and the oecumenical commonwealth of anxiety , almost terror , for the communist threat , was really the perfect recipe for an installment of alien hysteria , " said Sheehan .
On the big screen door and in books , because Mars was still thought to hold vegetal life sentence , the planet was an unparalled generator of evil scary monsters , ushering in some of the undecomposed and worstalien moviesof the fifties and 1960s . But writers such as Bradbury , who were critical of government policies , also commented via report set on Mars . " It work both ways , as a form of propaganda and cultural criticism , " said Crossley .
Even though the 1964 film " Santa Claus Conquers the Martians " might have been best left in the can , the volume of books and moving picture bring forth during this era ensure Mars move into the public cognisance and never leave .
Wax and ebb
" The nature of people ’s interest in Mars has evolve in the last 50 or 60 days , but it ’s never entirely vanished , " said Crossley .
In the 1960s , the former Mariner missionsprompted a ultra modification in our relationship with Mars , when image show an apparently dead , cratered planet .
" The flyby show pictures of a very moonlike landscape , which had a staggering effect , " read Sheehan . " It get out hoi polloi quite discouraged . " NASA ’s despatch may have toss off some of the Red Planet ’s Romantic Movement , Sheehan believes .
" The less defined an object is like Mars , the more evocative it is . We use it as a Rorschach to protrude our hopes and fears on to . As Mars becomes more explored , it becomes a more quotidian setting that no longer enchant the imagery , " Sheehan say .
After the Mariner mission , it take aim years before Mars again became a destination for humans in popular culture . These days , author must step carefully with reams of scientific data point usable for consumer who are feeling contradictory .
" defect in pop culture today is in inseparable from thescience of Mars , " said Crossley .
Sheehan note that crowing - CRT screen farces like " Mars Attacks " and " Total Recall " may go down easily , but attempt to accurately recreate the Red Planet seem to flush it at the box office . Take " John Carter , " a movie detailing what bechance when a Civil War ex-serviceman is transplanted to the Red Planet : " That was one of the most black moving picture of last summer , " said Sheehan .
now , how does a picture producer ( or NASA ) get up upexcitement about Marswhen a teenager can virtually drive a wanderer across its rocky red dust ?
For Erika Harnett , a space physicist who grew up on sci - fi tarradiddle , it ’s the tantalizing feel that the reality of Mars is within stretch .
" We understand Mars to a academic degree that we have not even amount close to on any other planets or moons . I suppose what get a lot of scientist shake is no dissimilar than what gets the public excited : the idea of when can we commit people there , can we incur life on Mars , " say Harnett , a prof at the University of Washington .
