For millenia humans have considered Mars the most fascinating planet in
our solar system. We've watched this Earth-like world first with the
naked eye, then using telescopes, and, most recently, through robotic
orbiters and landers and rovers on the surface.
Historian William Sheehan and astronomer and planetary scientist Jim
Bell combine their talents to tell a unique story of what we've learned
by studying Mars through evolving technologies. What the eye sees as a
mysterious red dot wandering through the sky becomes a blurry mirage of
apparent seas, continents, and canals as viewed through Earth-based
telescopes. Beginning with the Mariner and Viking missions of the 1960s
and 1970s, space-based instruments and monitoring systems have flooded
scientists with data on Mars's meteorology and geology, and have even
sought evidence of possible existence of life-forms on or beneath the
surface. This knowledge has transformed our perception of the Red Planet
and has provided clues for better understanding our own blue world.
Discovering Mars vividly conveys the way our understanding of this
other planet has grown from earliest times to the present. The story is
epic in scope--an Iliad or Odyssey for our time, at least so far largely
without the folly, greed, lust, and tragedy of those ancient stories.
Instead, the narrative of our quest for the Red Planet has showcased
some of our species' most hopeful attributes: curiosity, cooperation,
exploration, and the restless drive to understand our place in the
larger universe. Sheehan and Bell have written an ambitious first draft
of that narrative even as the latest chapters continue to be added both
by researchers on Earth and our robotic emissaries on and around Mars,
including the latest: the Perseverance rover and its Ingenuity
helicopter drone, which set down in Mars's Jezero Crater in February
2021.
