Mars a search for meaning
Mars, the vengeful planet, has intrigued the world for millennia. Fear of Earth's nearest planetary neighbor was aroused in ancient times when sky watchers noted the bright red dot in the sky and believed it carried war, pestilence and the need for human sacrifice. The Romans named it Mars for their god of war.
Inventive projections of Martian life-forms and their supposed intelligence have created an impressive body of scientific and popular literature -- all of it without the essential ingredient of a demonstrable fact. The discovery of life, no matter how rudimentary, would be a scientific and philosophical sensation. It would mean we are not alone; that the evolution of life on Earth is not some fluke of chemistry.
Ever since a United States National Aeronautic and Space Administration scientist claimed last year to have found evidence of fossilized bacterial life buried within the molecular structure of a meteorite found in Antarctica allegedly originating from Mars, there has been ballooning scientific and political pressure to take a closer look.
The choice of Independence Day for the Pathfinder touchdown is more than a coincidence. NASA, having suffered huge budgetary cuts in recent years, has used Mars as part of a publicity program to justify its existence. Although funding is much tighter than in the 1960s glory days of space exploration, the widely predicted elimination of the U.S. space program has not materialized.
Pathfinder is promoted as space exploration on the cheap. The whole Mars enterprise will cost less than a single Apollo expedition to the Moon. Another nine flights to the red planet are planned before 2005, when a craft will collect rocks from the surface and return them to Earth. Another eight years... will the fundamental question be answered? The Apollo program, of course, confirmed that the Moon was not made of cheese. Pathfinder will not find little green men. But will it discover signs of life? The world will watch, with fascination.
-- The Australian