Grade Level: JrH-Adult
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: |
Running Time: 50 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No |
Copyright Date: 1997
Available in French:
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This 40-year history of unmanned missions to Mars captures the human tension of a journey into the unknown: the impact of failure on those who invested careers in a mission; the extraordinary engineering challenge of building a complex machine capable of travelling across the solar system; the emotional and intellectual excitement of visiting, and remotely experiencing, another world. Mankind's first attempt to reach another planet took place on 10th October, 1960, when a Soviet rocket blasted off for Mars. The booster failed, plunging earthwards to destruction, and setting a gloomy precedent for future Martian missions. In the following decades the USSR and the USA tried to send 25 probes to Mars, most of which were total failures. The latest victim was Mars-96, seven years in planning, which sank in the Pacific along with many scientific careers. And NASA's $300 million Mars Orbiter came to a catastrophic end in 1993, going dead shortly before it was due to arrive. Now, with the successful landing of Pathfinder in 1997, NASA is planning the most intensive programme of planetary exploration in history. Close on the heels of Pathfinder was Global Surveyor. These will be followed at intervals of 26 months by further missions that will push the frontiers of tele-robotic exploration to new limits, culminating in a sample-return mission early in this century. |
