The drivers of the mission ExoMars, a proof of concept for other more ambitious that will search for life on the red planet, were yesterday in the dark about the fate of the probe Schiaparelli, whose faint heartbeat enmudecieron abruptly a minute before the instant planned for that to touch martian soil. Fortunately, after crossing 496 million kilometres, the european vessel that transported it was in perfect conditions, performing manoeuvres that are critical to be inserted in your observation post and start a task that will last for six years.
the lovers of space exploration, that we follow with fascination at the alternatives of this new odyssey, the setback reminds us of the difficulties of venturing beyond our home in the space toward the vicinity of our neighboring planet, in which reigns an average temperature of -63 degrees celsius (which can reach 100 degrees below zero at night), swept by winds of over 150 km per hour and in which rises a mountain (the mount Olympus) three times higher than Everest! In these days, in which the idea of establishing human colonies on Mars dominated the information landscape for the ads mogul Elon Musk and president Barack Obama, it is good to remember that nothing is easy in space: around 50 robotic missions to half a dozen countries have sent to Mars since the years 60, almost half failed.
perhaps because of their closeness in cosmic terms, this world of neighborhood solar always exercised over us a spell special. In September of 1984, it is already 32 years old, a young Dennis Overbye, that today integrates the staff of science journalists of The New York Times, published a “special report” Discover that a review of the colorful loom of science and fantasy that draws us from antiquity.
“There are two worlds called Mars -writes Overbye-. One is the planet of reality (…), a landscape of ice, dust and red rocks furrowed by lonely canyons and channels, dried-up rivers. The other Mars is the planet of imagination, a world stalked by past glories, where an ancient civilization survives in ruins at the side of irrigation canals.”
Both inspired a chapter unspeakable of our history of love with the cosmos since the chaldeans and the romans warned their reddish glow in the sky of the dusk and turned it into god of war. In that saga register, for example, the proposal of the “prince of mathematicians”, Karl Gauss (a child prodigy, a child of parents who are illiterate that the seven years found in minutes, the solution to the problem of how to sum the numbers from 1 to 100) to grow in Siberia a huge triangle of wheat surrounded by pine trees attracting the attention of the little men green.
later, a frenchman, Charles Cros, suggested to build a large mirror to concentrate the sunlight and drawing a number in the sands on mars. And in 1899, the genius Serbian Nikolai Tesla (whose inventions are the subject of a compelling exhibition these days at the Fundación Telefónica, here, in Buenos Aires) tried to “talk to the planets” from his lab in Colorado, united States of America, generating powerful electromagnetic currents with an electrical coil 21 metres in diameter, but barely managed to light the lamps of 40 miles.
it Was the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (whose name carries the probe that has just landed in the martian dust) which opened the door to the most varied hypotheses about aliens builders of great works of engineering when he observed the planet through the telescope, noticed fine lines on its surface and referred to them as “channels”. After, the diplomat become astronomer Percival Lowell suggested that they had been built by an advanced civilization to irrigate the planet with water in its ice caps, ice-cream. Mapped your channels (437) and the hypothetical cities that stood on their intersections.
With the successive scientific discoveries, the legend retreated and revealed a new image of the red planet. Different, but just as captivating. Especially if you think you may possibly reach out to see the day that, as anticipated a visionary Overbye more than three decades ago: “Having been dragged through millions of kilometers of vacuum by a dream, they may find that the martians exist. Are (or will be) ourselves.”
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