Jolie Rouge
06-04-2003, 09:20 PM
"Mars is bad luck for space and a real difficulty for us. If we were sailors, I think we would be very superstitious about going to Mars."
That's what the science director of the European Space Agency, David Southwood, told Reuters just as it launched the latest mission to the red planet this week, the Mars Express with its Beagle 2 space probe. Beagle will burrow into Mars' surface, analyze rock, hunt for water, and relay information back to Earth for six months through the Express spacecraft. It's one of three missions taking off this month for Mars as scientists take advantage of this time when Mars is as close to Earth as it will get.
The scientists call it the curse of Mars.
Twenty of the last 30 missions by robotic explorers sent to Mars have ended in failure, including the Mars Polar Lander, which crashed landed on the planet on Dec. 3, 1999. Another spectacular loss was the Mars Climate Orbiter, which was destroyed on entry in September 1999 because of human error stemming from engineers using two sets of measurements--one used miles and the other kilometers.
The most sophisticated probe to ever search for life on Mars, the Beagle 2 is named after the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands. Scientists really think that Beagle 2 will definitively answer that age-old question: Is there life on Mars?
Is there life on Mars?
This mission may tell us. Scientists have figured out the most likely place where life may lurk. Click to find out the unusual site.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/package.jsp?name=news/lifeonmars/lifeonmars&floc=nn-wnew
Curse of Mars? Why It Seems So Real ...
It's the MIB, I tell ya' !
That's what the science director of the European Space Agency, David Southwood, told Reuters just as it launched the latest mission to the red planet this week, the Mars Express with its Beagle 2 space probe. Beagle will burrow into Mars' surface, analyze rock, hunt for water, and relay information back to Earth for six months through the Express spacecraft. It's one of three missions taking off this month for Mars as scientists take advantage of this time when Mars is as close to Earth as it will get.
The scientists call it the curse of Mars.
Twenty of the last 30 missions by robotic explorers sent to Mars have ended in failure, including the Mars Polar Lander, which crashed landed on the planet on Dec. 3, 1999. Another spectacular loss was the Mars Climate Orbiter, which was destroyed on entry in September 1999 because of human error stemming from engineers using two sets of measurements--one used miles and the other kilometers.
The most sophisticated probe to ever search for life on Mars, the Beagle 2 is named after the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands. Scientists really think that Beagle 2 will definitively answer that age-old question: Is there life on Mars?
Is there life on Mars?
This mission may tell us. Scientists have figured out the most likely place where life may lurk. Click to find out the unusual site.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/package.jsp?name=news/lifeonmars/lifeonmars&floc=nn-wnew
Curse of Mars? Why It Seems So Real ...
It's the MIB, I tell ya' !