Space Objects and Comets: Mars Controversy

Mars Fact Sheet Images of Mars - from the Catalog of Spaceborne Imaging Images of Phobos and Deimos - from the Catalog of Spaceborne Imaging NSSDC Planetary Photo Gallery - More Images of Mars Mars Exploration - History and possible future crewed missions

Of the 22,000 or so meteorites that have been discovered on Earth, only 32 have been identified as originating from the planet Mars. These rare meteorites created a stir throughout the world when NASA announced in August 1996 that evidence of microfossils may be present in one of these Mars meteorites. The meteorites in the table below are grouped by their pairings and listed roughly in the order that they were found.

Hubble telescope pictures of Mars, taken June 27, 1997 in preparation for the July 4 landing of the Pathfinder spacecraft, show a dust storm churning through the deep canyons of Valles Marineris, just 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of the Pathfinder spacecraft landing site.

The recently refurbished Hubble telescope obtained the sharpest view of Mars ever taken from Earth. This stunning portrait was taken with March 10, 1997, just before the Red Planet made one of its closest passes to Earth (about 60 million miles or 100 million kilometers).

This page contains RealAudio sound files. You'll have to down load the Real Player to hear them. You can hear Richard Berry from the Sydney Observatory explain the Greek Mythology of mars. You can also listen to Dr Karl Kruszelnicki talk about some scientific insights into Mars, or read the text below. Mars is the fourth planet out from the Sun, and the last of the rocky planets.

The New York Times - Mars data and recent news articles. Mean Radius: 3388.0 km • Mass: 0.108 (Earth=1) • Density: 3.94 (g/cm3) • Gravity: 0.380 (Earth=1) • Orbit Period: 686.98 (Earth days)

Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: For many years one of Wallace's least remembered books, Is Mars Habitable? is increasingly being recognized as one of the first examples of the proper application of the scientific method to the study of extraterrestrial atmospheres and geography--that is, as one of the pioneer works in the field of exobiology.

Explanation: Does Mars have canals? A hot debate topic of the late 1800s, several prominent astronomers including Percival Lowell not only claimed to see an extensive system of long straight canals on Mars, but used them to indicate that intelligent life exists there. The relatively close opposition of 1894 was used to make drawings like the one digitally re-scaled on the above left.