Discovering Mars

For thousands of years, Mars has held people's attention as the most captivating world in our solar system. Our first view of this Earth-like planet came with the naked eye, then through telescopes, and in recent decades through robotic orbiters, landers, and rovers working on its surface. Historian William Sheehan and astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell join their skills to chart how we came to know this neighbor. Through early telescopes, a faint reddish point drifting across the night sky seemed to reveal shimmering seas, continents, and canals, and only later did that picture give way to a far more detailed understanding.

Beginning with the Mariner and Viking missions of the 1960s and 1970s, instruments in space have sent back a flood of information about the planet's weather and geology. Some of these probes also searched for signs that life may have existed on or beneath the surface. These discoveries have changed how we picture Mars and have offered clues that help us understand the world we live on.

The book follows the growth of human understanding of Mars from the earliest observations to the present day. Its scope rivals the great Greek epics, yet it leaves out their violence, greed, and ruin. Instead, it highlights the hopeful side of the human story: curiosity, cooperation, exploration, and the enduring urge to find out where we fit in the wider universe.

The authors present an ambitious first draft of this account, since the story is still being written. Researchers on Earth and robotic explorers at and around Mars keep adding new chapters, including the Perseverance rover and its Ingenuity helicopter drone, which landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021.