Is there life on Mars?

People have long suspected that there might be. The American astronomer Percival Lowell, after studying the maps of Milanese astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, became convinced that an alien civilization was slowly dying on the planet. His work in turn inspired the classic novel by H.G. Wells and a profusion of movies based on the chilling premise laid out in Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Martians have inhabited our collective imagination for more than a hundred years. And there are good reasons for our fascination. Of all the planets in our solar system, Mars is most like Earth. It has seasons, as Earth does, and though cooler than Earth, the temperatures on Mars are within a range that humans might endure. The latest findings by NASA indicate the presence of water ice on Mars. And where there is water, there is also the possibility of life.

A journey to Mars is no longer a dream. Dana Berry draws on the latest scientific findings — and on research developed for the television miniseries Race to Mars — to describe the work already underway to take humans to the Red Planet. He describes the construction in low Earth orbit of the Terra Nova spacecraft that will carry the crew to Mars. He examines the nature of the risks — from mechanical failure and fire to physical and psychological breakdown — that the crew will have to overcome. And he documents the important experiments that will be conducted when Earth’s first human emissaries set foot on Martian soil.

DANA BERRY has worked at the Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA and is a former art director for the Hubble Space Telescope. He contributes to Sky and Telescope, National Geographic and the BBC and is the author and illustrator of New Cosmos.