Mars fixation

Over the past 100 years, scientists have posited Mars to be the only other planet in our solar system capable of supporting some sort of life as we know it. For that reason, earthlings have looked on the Red Planet with a mixture of fascination and fear.

In 1877, when astronomer Giovanni Sciaparelli reported seeing channels on Mars, we imagined someone must have built them.

On the night before Halloween in 1938, Orson Welles scared Americans witless with a simulated radio news broadcast many believed was actually reporting an invasion of strange beings from Mars. "The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate," Welles reported in "The War of the Worlds," sending panicky listeners to cellars and loading their guns.

Best known for his Tarzan books, Edgar Rice Burroughs, also wrote an adventure series about a Civil War veteran who travels to Mars through astral projection. There he finds a planet dying due to wars and the disappearance of the oceans and atmosphere. For the early 20th century, that was some projection.

Celebrated science fiction writer Ray Bradbury's beautiful Martians were attacked by human invaders in "The Martian Chronicles." In the 1960s TV sitcom "My Favorite Martian," Ray Walston's alien was a benevolent anthropology professor shipwrecked on planet Earth and just trying to get home.

Since it became possible, we have been sending probes to Mars in an attempt to find out more. Two-thirds of the probes have vanished as they neared, never to be heard from. We know it is not a hospitable planet.

Now our fixation on Mars is being gratified by the landing of a new mission that has overcome its biggest obstacle: landing.

Only about 5 percent of the planet's surface was available as landing sites because the vehicle must charge its solar powered batteries in strong sunlight and had to land in a low elevation so that the atmosphere wasn't too thin for the parachute to work.

Many schools around the world are using the Jan. 3 landing of the unmanned spacecraft Spirit to teach students about Mars and space exploration. Today, President Bush is scheduled to announce details of a proposal to build a permanent manned station on the moon and to send manned ships to Mars later on.

The current Mars mission cost $820 million, a substantial investment with a very simple goal: to find water. Scientists now believe water could currently exist on Mars, either on the surface or just below. And where there is water, we know, there is life.

At the landing area, we've seen only Mohave-ish red dust and craters. The six-wheeled Spirit rover is scheduled to begin moving about the surface of Mars either late today or Thursday, ending a 35-million-mile journey with a three-week tour of the planet by a golf-cart-sized rover.

Spirit's twin, a landing vehicle called Opportunity, is scheduled to touch down on the other side of the planet Jan. 24.

Space exploration has made most of our fears about Mars disappear, but the fascination continues.