NASA’s latest venture to Mars, one named Perseverance, is due to land on the red planet tomorrow afternoon. Its arrival follows separate missions from the United Arab Emirates and China, which entered orbit around Mars last week. China’s rover will descend from orbit in May or June, and if, like an Olympian gymnast, it “sticks” the perilous landing– a big if, indeed– it will begin to search the planet’s surface for evidence that water, and perhaps even Martian life, existed in ancient times.
The U.S. rover Perseverance has a similar mission. Prof. Sarah Johnson writes in today’s NY Times:
“The goal of NASA’s mission is to uncover a once-animate world. Perseverance will collect samples of Mars for eventual return to Earth, rocks that might hold the fingerprints of relic microbial life. For at least the next 687 days, the rover will explore Jezero crater, the site of an ancient river delta, in search of molecular fossils. Early in the solar system’s history, Earth and Mars were remarkably similar. Four and a half billion years ago, both planets had molten births, roiling with the heat of accretion, blooming with magma. Their surfaces then cooled into rocky crusts, replete with water and geologic activity. As life was getting started here, during that hazy time when chemistry gave way to biology, Mars was also a friendly environment. Rivers coursed across its surface, protected by a magnetic field that was spun into existence by the planet’s core. Volcanoes lofted greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, blanketing the planet with warmth.”
Indirect evidence of water on Mars has been found repeatedly since 1976, first by the early Viking landers, followed by the Mars Odyssey in 2002 and the Phoenix in 2008, and confirmed years later by the Curiosity rover. Other missions contributing to the ultimate colonization of Mars, such as Mariner, Pathfinder, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Opportunity and Spirit, are mentioned in my science fiction novel Fourth World (2016), the first in a trilogy (see the Fourth World Series, on Amazon).
Imagining “history” in Fourth World from 2016 forward, Orion arrives in 2030, and the second manned mission to Mars lands in 2049. Those future explorers discover and begin mining for liquid underground water, the equivalent of gold on that arid world— thus earning them a nickname, “The New 49ers.” Chapter Two of that novel is dedicated to the sort of explication and world-creation that all sci-fi novels inevitably must attempt. The following scene begins in a vast, dimly-lit cavern, the base for water-mining operations. My protagonist, Benn Marr, and his pal Jace have buckled themselves into the cockpit of a Worm:
“Formally known as a Water Exploration and Retrieval Machine, the Worm was essentially a sixty-meter-long drill-bit on tracks, with five interlocking “splitters” at the nose end and spiral-grooved sides which spun the entire vehicle into the relatively soft sedimentary rock enclosing the deep cavern. Inside, Benn and Jace felt no hint of the spinning motion, indeed had no view of the exterior, and were guided only by Jace’s station, which periodically emitted an amplified microwave pulse and analyzed its complex echo. The resulting image, consisting of red and green flashes of varying duration and intensity, when translated by the skilled navigator, enabled them to drill through the planet’s crust, much as a spaceship might find its way safely through an asteroid belt. It also provided a hint at the location of underground collections of precious water: a rather crude aid they would actually have relied on, if not for Benn’s inexplicable ability in that area.
…..
“Grasping the steering handle like a divining rod, Benn guided the Worm toward water in a trance-like state, with eyes locked shut and a fierce facial expression which Jace found both inspirational and frightening. It’s like he’s possessed, Jace had once told Mr. Yelic; I think he hears voices. Sometimes he had to shake Benn by the shoulder to warn him of an impending collision with a large boulder. Except for those minor deviations, their journey followed a straight path to the water site, which was usually a zone of moist gravel or clay, with an occasional small pocket of standing water, located in the midst of volcanic rock. These zones were the remains of vast underground aquifers which, in the first half of the planet’s existence, had fed bubbling, methanous hot springs on the surface. The discovery of water was momentous enough, but the large reservoirs of methane contained in the volcanic rock– methane which, in theory, could serve as a food source for underground microbes– were nearly as exciting to the early explorers…”
This recent flurry of activity around Mars is probably coincidental, a mere convergence of separate national timetables for space exploration. Or, instead, it may reflect a global, not-so-subconscious realization that we need to prepare an escape route from our dear, warming planet Earth (what I termed “Elon’s Ark” in my first Mars or Bust post in this blog, January 2017). As we pass one point-of-no-return after another, cross one line of irreversible loss after another, we begin, quite understandably, to eye all possible exits. Having wasted four critical years under a sociopathic president hell-bent on undermining any and all measures to slow climate change, our sense of impending doom can seem overwhelming at times. But it isn’t too late. Just as they say about wearing masks and other public health precautions during the Covid pandemic, if everyone would 1) start believing that the crisis is real and not a hoax; 2) think of the world’s population as one interdependent community with universal human rights; and 3) sign on to science-based conservation efforts on an individual and local basis, there is still time for us to roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done.
Fourth World 