LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE >> Fifty years ago, the Mariner 4 spacecraft flyby dispelled fears of Martians visiting Earth, but now there is debate over whether humanity will occupy the red planet one day, an expert panel said Monday.
The reality of putting people on Mars is a mirage in the distant future but so was flying by Mars on July 14, 1965, panel experts said. Coincidentally, exactly 50 years after NASA reached its first planet, the agency flew by Pluto, completing humanity’s first tour of Earth’s solar system.
“Before that moment in all of history, human beings were free to think Mars could be anything they wanted it to be,” said Gentry Lee, chief engineer for the Solar System Exploration Directorate. “In 1938, Orson Welles did a radio show … story about the Martians landing, and there was panic all over the East Coast because someone actually believed the Martians landed in New Jersey.”
About 410 Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff and students listened to four NASA experts and one science fiction writer on Monday in the newly named Pickering Auditorium at JPL. Many sci-fi writers keep abreast of planetary exploration, and there is a thin line between the genre and future vision, said Lindsay Hays, JPL science systems engineer and panel moderator.
Fifty years ago, NASA employees pieced together and hand-colored printed ones and zeros Mariner sent back to Earth. The result was the first image people saw of Mars. Suddenly the red planet went from “it can be anything to this place,” Lee said.
After Mariner 4’s flyby of Mars, it returned 22 low-resolution images — a great feat considering NASA hadn’t intended to put a camera on spacecrafts in the early days, said Sarah Milkovich, a JPL science systems engineer. The event sparked the field of comparative planetology. Even more important than the scientific data Mariner 4 returned is the shift in thinking it created, she said.
“Mariner 4 was the moment where Mars went from the hands of the astronomers into the hands of the geologists, and we’re starting to see that with the Pluto flyby,” Milkovich said. “Pluto is now a place, and Mars became a place …. We could start to think about what really happened there and how is Mars changed by its history and what can we learn about how the Earth has changed in its history from what we learn from Mars.”
Although the then-Soviet Union was the impetus for Mariner 4’s journey, NASA later became fascinated with the red planet itself, Lee said.
“It is phenomenal to think that 50 years ago, every point in the sky was a pinpoint of light and now every pinpoint of light is a place we know something about,” Lee said.
While groups such as Mars One hope to colonize the red planet, Lee said it’s unlikely people ever will occupy the red planet, especially since the scientific community probably will find a more hospitable environment elsewhere.
“I’m deeply concerned whether it makes sense to try to undertake a mission to Mars while we have so many unanswered questions,” he said, adding space exploration should never send a human to do a robot’s job.
Sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson said it makes more sense to occupy Mars because the planet is relatively close to Earth. John Casani, Mariner 4 spacecraft systems manager, supported Robinson’s view and said people need to consider what will happen when the next mass extinction hits.
“I don’t think sending eight or 10 people to Mars for three or four months and bringing them back as being the whole point of if it is worth it,” Casani said. “What we ought to try to do is try to establish a self-sustaining colony for 10,000 people living on Mars permanently by the year 2300 or something like that. It’s going to be a long-range proposition.”
The panelists all said they’re uncertain what the next 50 years will bring. The probability of finding life somewhere other than Mars has skyrocketed in the past 15 years, Lee said. New technology and new discoveries will drive NASA’s next 50 years, but, he said, one thing is certain: The answer to the question “Are we alone?” is the driving force for future planetary discoveries.
