ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
NASA kicked off an intensive search for evidence of life on other worlds Thursday by launching the first of 13 Earth-to-Mars spaceships scheduled over the next 10 years.
After a one-day delay because of high winds, the Mars Global Surveyor blasted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 50 seconds after noon, lugging six scientific instruments to explore the Martian environment.
``It's the beginning of a long sequence of missions ultimately whose goal must be to determine whether or not life was ever on Mars or even perhaps exists now,'' said Wesley Huntress Jr., chief of space science for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The unmanned missions - 10 American, two Russian and one Japanese - were planned long before the tantalizing discovery that at least two Martian meteorites contain what may be relics of once-living organisms.
A team of American scientists announced in August that they had found what looked like fossilized bacteria in a 4.5 billion-year-old Martian rock picked up in Antarctica. Just last week, British scientists who had examined a second meteor from Mars said they had found similar signs that life may have existed 600,000 years ago.
The fossil reports added urgency and excitement to humanity's long fascination with the Red Planet.
The series of interplanetary voyages - spaced 26 months apart when Mars is in the best position relative to Earth - is supposed to culminate in 2005 with the return of samples of Martian rocks and soil for detailed study.
Scientists say they need such materials to confirm the highly uncertain evidence of tiny, bacteria-like organisms found in Martian rocks that fell to Earth many years ago.
``We won't know for sure until we go to Mars and bring back samples,'' said David McKay, a NASA scientist who is studying the Martian meteorites.
The Surveyor is to reach Mars next September after a looping journey of 435 million miles that will take it half way around the Sun.
Once there, it will spend six months settling into orbit, and then two Earth years (one Martian year) mapping the planet's enormous mountains, deep valleys and dried up river beds.
At an average height of 234 miles above the Martian surface, the spaceship's cameras can detect objects as small as 6 feet across. They might photograph the two Viking landers that NASA abandoned there 21 years ago.
The Surveyor won't be alone when it gets to its destination. Two more missions are ready to go in quick succession.
The Mars missions have three goals:
First, to search for signs of life - most likely in the past but possibly present today.
Scientists say all the ingredients for life, including water and oxygen, exist on Mars, even though the planet's surface is barren. They are eager to find out if liquid water is hidden in thick layers of icy rock, as it is in similar formations in the polar regions on Earth.
Second, to learn why the Martian climate, once warm and wet, is now dry and cold. Understanding what sent Mars into a deep freeze could help explain the risks facing Earth's climate.
Third, to study whether the geology and resources of Mars could support future human exploration.
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