PLANET SEARCH
FUTURES:
Winner of Sir Arthur Clarke Award for 'Best Written
Presentation', 2005
Mars
(2) 
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
| For the background a of a cover for Astronomy Now (May 2001), I created a montage of views of Mars through the ages: from Schiaparelli's first drawing, through Lowell's 'canals', a telescopic photo, Mariner 4, and a Viking image. In the corner is one of H.G.Wells' Fighting Machines |
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One design for a manned martian lander is an 'aerobraker', which enters the atmosphere rather like a clamshell, then opens up to reveal its cargo, as here. (From The Newsround Book of Space, 1992.) |
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| A design of Mars-rover, similar to that used on the Moon but adapted to martian conditions and atmosphere. (From Atlas of the Solar System, 1981) | ) |
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In Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Red Mars trilogy, a huge dirigible (a cross between a balloon and a microlight) is used to travel large distances over the dramatic terrain of Mars. (Cover for Interzone. From the private collection of Paul McAuley.) |
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| One of mankind's most ambitious projects is to 'terraform' Mars ~ releasing its locked-up water and oxygen and making it habitable by humans. Several novels have been written around this theme, most notably Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent 'Red Mars' trilogy. This painting was used on the cover of Arthur C. Clarke's The Snows of Olympus (1994). |
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| A canyon on Mars. This is a tributary to the main Valles Marineris system, but would make spectacular viewing, especially when filled with early-morning fog, as here, formed when water or CO2 which froze during the night is vaporised by the rising Sun. Ice crystals in the high cirrus clouds form 'sun-dogs' around the early-morning Sun. From Futures |
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