National Geographic - USA (2021-03)

Visionary Technology The twin boxes seen above on Persever- ance’s mast are its main cameras, which stand six and a half feet of ...

interest in Mars is ageless. For millennia we’ve made sense of Mars by attaching our deities to it, charting its motion, and map ...

green men, and microbes, and human settle- ments, and how Mars fervor has returned after every setback. At the same time, I know ...

Sampling arm, stowed COLLECT 2021-2023 DEPOSIT MEDA atmospheric analyzer Navcams MOXIE Separation by heat and electricity Intake ...

SAMPLE TUBE ACTUAL SIZE Mars Ascent Vehicle Sample Return Sample Lander Fetch Rover Earth Entry Vehicle Earth Return Orbiter Sam ...

N e r e t v a V a l l i s C R A T E R R I M C R A T E R R I M J E Z E R Belva crater -^230 0 -^230 0 -^220 0 (^2100) (^230) ...

O C R A T E R -^2500 2500 - (^2500) -^2500 (^2500) -^2600 -^26 00 --^222555000000 22550000 - -- (^222555000000) -^22 ...

25 mi 25 km EQUATOR North Pole 30 °N 150 ° 180 ° 210 ° (^210) ° 240 ° (^330) ° 270 ° (^240) ° (^270) ° 60 ° 90 ° (^30) ° 30 ° 0 ...

ANCIENT HORIZONS In 2003 a rover found evidence that water once flowed on Mars, but early climatic conditions on the red planet ...

that seasonally, the Martian polar caps shrank and expanded, unleashing a swath of darkness that crawled toward the equator. Som ...

by the red planet. It captured the first close-up images of the Martian surface in black and white, transforming the rich pop cu ...

Undulating Vista 2015 Dunes ripple across the landscape in a panorama made using NASA’s Curiosity rover. The dunes appear dark b ...

OUR OBSESSION WITH MARS 59 ...

soils were devoid of life, and at least one astron- omer—Carl Sagan—wasn’t ready to completely abandon the idea of even larger l ...

Mariner 6 & 7 Mariner 3 & 4 Mars Observer Mariner 8 & 9 Mars Global Surveyor Mars Pathfinder MPL/MCO Mars Odyssey Ma ...

about life on its surface. From canals to vege- tation to hotly debated hints of fossils in Mars meteorites, the red planet repe ...

But those ancient landscapes are still there, preserving a record of the planet’s infancy and a time when life could have thrive ...

1906 Lowell’s Canals As he drew on his maps (above) and described in a 1906 book, Percival Lowell believed Mars was a dying worl ...

2015 The Martian In Andy Weir’s futuristic survival tale, astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is abandoned on Mars afte ...

BY PHILLIP MORRIS | PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARTIN SCHOELLER 182 of those sent to death row actually were INNOCENT Since 1973, more than ...