Our resident columnist Nicholas Previsich takes the opportunity to map our own path into the future having as departure the launch anniversary of Mariner 9, the first mission to orbit another planet.
The Maps of History
May 30th 2008, tomorrow, will mark the 37th anniversary of the launch of Mariner 9 to Mars, and it arrived there the following November only to face a blinding dust-storm that obscured nearly every feature on the planet save for some dark spots in Tharsis, which later were revealed to be volcanoes more then 20 km high.
Mariner 9 survived and went on to show us that Mars was not just the Moon's bigger brother with a trace of atmosphere, but a world of its own, with canyons, riverbeds, and more, much more then we could understand at the time. That's why we've gone back, repeatedly.
We still don't understand it all, and the harder we look the more we find that begs explanation, such as 'slope streaks' and putative geysers. Active things are happening on what was originally thought to be a dead rock in space, a dashed dream from the days of early space exploration. What we've really found is that Mars and indeed the rest of the Solar System is not what we expected, yet also dynamic in ways we hadn't thought of given our limited perspective as dwellers of Earth's surface.
Our perspective is changing, however, as we learn, as we see more. Mariner 9 was the first mission to map another world. We mapped our satellite reasonably well for Apollo and other reasons, but Mars was the first planet we really knew beyond our own...assigning map coordinates, names, and a systemic way to organize and view alien terrain.
The historical precedents should not be overlooked, nor the significance of this event. Amerigo Vespucci produced the first preliminary map of the east coast of the New World in the late 1400s; the remainder of the Americas would be mapped within a century. More then 500 years passed until another hemisphere of a world was mapped. Yet it only took thirty years afterwards to map more then a dozen worlds, from Mercury outward, as we explode beyond our cradle using tools that could not have been dreamed of by the ancients.
This is a special, even unique, time in history. The Americas were a discovery to the Europeans, but of course the Native Americans had seen them before. For the first time in 25,000 years or more, the human race is truly seeing new territory, mapping entire worlds via cameras and radar. What we see is not familiar, nor should we expect it to be. These are alien places, and although they obey the laws of physics and chemistry there is no mandate to follow a path in these processes that we find familiar or comfortable. In fact, we should be surprised to find anything familiar at all on these worlds, for the main lesson learned in our travels thus far is that few things are as they seem at first glance.
That never has deterred us. When we see a new place, we go there.
We'll do the same with the Solar System. We will move outward and survive, as we always have, make accomodations for the strangeness of new places as the drives of evolution force us to do....and somehow enjoy and learn from the experience in the bargain.
The true story of humanity has barely begun.
Want to know more about Mariner 9? Click here.
Editor's note: Nicholas Previsich is now oficially retired...here are my congratulations and my wish that this will permit you to have more time to think about, write and share your ideas with me (I'm your fan you know that...) and spacEurope readers.
You're the man!