ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 9, 1996 TAG: 9607090050
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
WHAT THIS invasion of Mars lacks in Hollywood excitement, it promises to more than make up for in scientific achievement.
Three spacecraft will be launched this fall to study the Red Planet, two to orbit Mars and one to land on the surface with a robot research station and rover vehicle for exploration. Two are U.S. craft; the third - Mars '96, an orbiting spacecraft carrying two more surface stations and two soil penetrators - will be Russian.
The lesson: Despite America's Cold War race to "win space," putting men on the moon was just a beginning. The only viable way to continue the extraordinarily expensive exploration of space is to unite fellow Earthlings in joint ventures.
In this summer's "Independence Day," like so many movies of the outer-space genre, hostile alien invaders force the nations of Earth to come together in their humanity to fight a common threat. In real life, other enemies - high cost; public apathy; a host of conflicting, mainly laudable but completely Earthbound spending priorities - have been the mundane but effective catalysts for international cooperation. To go forward, planetary exploration will have to be an international effort.
Russia is not the only partner with the United States in the Mars program. The American orbiter, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, will carry a French-supplied radio to relay data from the surface. Experts from 20 countries are working on the Russian Mars '96 craft.
These spacecraft are to be followed, scientists hope, by unmanned launches every two years as part of NASA's Surveyor program. A Japanese orbiter is scheduled to go up in August 1998, to study Martian upper-atmospheric physics.
Scientists hope finally to learn what the planet is made of, to map its surface through the changing seasons of the Martian year, and to penetrate the inhospitable topsoil in search of traces of organic matter or water that would indicate life once existed on the planet.
Or indicate life exists even now, perhaps deep underground. Most scientists hold little expectation of that. But the thrill of science is discovering what was unknown. Already, humankind is discovering the advantage of interplanetary exploration via international cooperation.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB