Whatever the Romans thought, civilisations throughout history have described looking into the night sky and seeing a bright, red light. But where does Mars’ characteristic colour come from? Often called the ‘Red Planet’, Mars has been in the news a lot recently with three separate missions being sent to explore the planet’s surface in 2021. Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. The ancient Romans were also interested in Mars. They even considered the planet to be a god – but god of what? Was Mars the Roman god of ... Since the 1960s, humans have set out to discover what Mars can teach us about how planets grow and evolve, and whether it has ever hosted alien life. So far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the trip to the red planet, but that could soon change. NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s—and several new missions are launching before then to push exploration forward. Here’s a look at why these journeys are so important—and what humans have learned about Mars through decades of exploration. Why explore Mars

How Does NASA Name Things on Mars? (Mars Report - June 2023)

Marina Jurica: Here in the operations area for the Perseverance rover, the team is driving into new Martian terrain every day, just like our other rover, Curiosity.

Astrobiology

OK, Neil let’s recap the vocabulary from this programme on the Red Planet, Mars, starting with astronomer– someone who studies the stars, planets and moons in our universe. The Red Planet has been a target for investigations over many centuries. No planet has been so heavily explored, other than our own, according to NASA. And from all that we have learned from astrobiology, life is amazingly adaptable, but it still needs water. So that’s why water is the key. So, finding liquid water on Mars, whether or not it’s now or whether or not it’s in the past, tells you that you potentially have a habitableenvironment, some place that could support life and perhaps even Martian life. Mars is kept company by two cratered moons — an inner moon named Phobos and an outer moon named Deimos. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/Univ. of Arizona) Scientists want to know if Mars may have had living things in the past. They also want to know if Mars could support life now or in the future. Structure and Surface

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I'm joined today with Tina Seeger who's going to tell us a little bit about her role on the rover teams and why it's important. This February 3, 2013, image provided by NASA shows a self portrait of the Mars rover, Curiosity. NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered signs of an ancient freshwater lake on Mars that may have teemed with microbes for tens of millions of years, far longer than scientists had imagined, new research suggests. Photograph by NASA, AP The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Exploring Mars helps scientists learn about momentous shifts in climate that can fundamentally alter planets. It also lets us look for biosignatures, signs that might reveal whether life was abundant in the planet’s past—and if it still exists on Mars today. And, the more we learn about Mars, the better equipped we’ll be to try to make a living there, someday in the future. Past missions, major discoveries Landing on Mars is always an incredibly difficult task and we are proud to continue building on our past success,” said JPL Director MichaelWatkins. “But, while Perseverance advances that success, this rover is also blazing its own path and daring new challenges in the surface mission. We built the rover not just to land but to find and collect the best scientific samples for return to Earth, and its incredibly complex sampling system and autonomy not only enable that mission, they set the stage for future robotic and crewed missions.”

Follow the Journey

Mission Commander Kate Bowman is the pilot and commander of the most important mission of the 21st century: saving the human race. It's 2050, earth is dying, and colonizing Mars is the only alternative to obliteration. Bowman and her crew have made this journey to investigate what went wrong with the malfunctioning Mars Terraforming Project, and to repair it. But what happens when they get there is far more terrifying than anyone could have guessed. Mars has captivated humans since we first set eyes on it as a star-like object in the night sky. Early on, its reddish hue set the planet apart from its shimmering siblings, each compelling in its own way, but none other tracing a ruddy arc through Earth’s heavens. Then, in the late 1800s, telescopes first revealed a surface full of intriguing features—patterns and landforms that scientists at first wrongly ascribed to a bustling Martian civilization. Now, we know there are no artificial constructions on Mars. But we’ve also learned that, until 3.5 billion years ago, the dry, toxic planet we see today might have once been as habitable as Earth.

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Once Ingenuity’s test flights are complete, the rover’s search for evidence of ancient microbial life will begin in earnest. The power systemthat provides electricity and heat for Perseverance through its exploration of Jezero Crater is a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) provided it to NASA through an ongoing partnership to develop power systems for civil space applications. Well, that all depends on finding water. Water is life, and as Dr Meyer told BBC World Service’s, The Forum, with water anything is possible. The second Mars movie in the year 2000 and unfortunately it couldn't better the first offering 'Mission to Mars' but was actually a bit worse. Mars has been in the news a lot recently with three separate missions being sent to explore the planet’s surface in 2021. Neil and Sam discuss our fascination with the 'Red Planet' and teach you related vocabulary. This week's question

Mars has an active atmosphere, but the surface of the planet is not active. Its volcanoes are dead. Today, three NASA spacecraft are circling, or orbiting Mars. The spacecraft are using scientific tools to measure the volcanoes, canyons, craters, temperature and the kinds of minerals on Mars. They also are taking pictures and searching for water. In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully operate on the planet’s surface, returning photos until 1982. They also conducted biological experiments on Martian soil that were designed to uncover signs of life in space—but their results were inconclusive, and scientists still disagree over how to interpret the data. Dive into this stunning map of different regions on the Red Planet, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.

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The innermost moon, Phobos, is heavily cratered and roughly 13.8 miles (22.2 km) in diameter. In about 50 million years, it is expected to break up or crash into Mars, according to NASA.

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Red's foster home certainly isn't the worst place she could be. It's a beautiful old farmhouse somewhere in the mid-west, there are lots of kids her age, and her foster parents, the ironically named Fosters, are good people. Still, they obviously have their hands full. For Red, it just isn't where she wants to be, and, when you are in a place like that, no matter how ideal the situation, you look for ways out. It's always a balancing game to give the supporting characters enough time to tell their stories without taking away from the central story. If you give them too much time, the audience forgets what the real story is and wants to know more about the secondary characters. But if you do it just right, the characters come to life and the reader thinks you told them much more than you actually did. I don't know which I achieved in Red's Planet, but I'm hoping the latter. Many other missions, both past and present, have produced amazing insights about the planet's history, and future planned missions should help continue this progress, according to The Planetary Society. NASA aims to send humans to explore the Red Planet by the late 2030s or early 2040s, according to Space.com. Is there life on Mars? Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. That means Earth and Jupiter are Mars’ neighboring planets.