PLANET SEARCH
FUTURES:
Winner of Sir Arthur Clarke Award for 'Best Written
Presentation', 2005
Mars
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The
Red Planet
- Diameter: 4.213 miles/6,780 km
- Distance from Sun: 142 million miles/228 M km
- Length of Year: 687 days
- Rotation: 24 hours 37 minutes
- Gravity (x Earth's): 0.38
- Axial Tilt: 25.2 degrees
- Average Temperature: -59C
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| Most asteroids follow orbits between Mars and Jupiter, but some, such as this 'Amor' asteroid, wander further afield. This one passes beneath the southern polar cap of Mars. | ) |
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This painting, produced for New Challenge of the Stars with Patrick Moore in 1978, shows a NASA design for a Mars landing. In the original edition (1972) the sky was dark blue, but this changed after the Viking landings in 1976. |
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Commissioned by the 2111 Foundation (now the Earth and Space Foundation), this shows an expedition leaving a base on the edge of the martian ice cap at dawn, intending to cross the pole in skidoos. |
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| More details and an animated version of this painting of a graben or fault valley on Mars may be found on my 'Teach-in' page. | ) |
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'Mars in 1995!' This was the hopeful title given to this painting, poduced in 1981 for an article by Dr Bob Parkinson in the British Interplanetary Society's magazine, Spaceflight, and then used as my first cover for the US magazine Analog in June 1981. The proposal used existing hardware, such as the NASA/ESA Spacelab for living quarters. On the surface can be seen Olympus Mons, the Solar System's biggest volcano. But can we reach Mars by 2015? Here's an excellent website that thinks so! ExploreMarsNow |
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| Exploring Mars. Whwther or not President Bush's promise to put human on Mars within the next 15-20 years bears fruit, it will happen some time in the future. Here we see t wo astronauts with their Mars Rover, equipped with grappling arms; this can travel over a variety of terrains includng rock fields and dunes, as seen here. From Futures |
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