RUSSIAN MARS PROBES Study of whether life is possible

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32620, 31 May 1971, Page 13

RUSSIAN MARS PROBES Study of whether life is possible

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

MOSCOW, May 30.

Russian scientists hope that their two Mars probes will give them the key to the red planet’s most important secret —whether it can support any kind of life.

After the usual Soviet pattern of secrecy on space probes, there were no progress reports yet on the two probes, launched on May 19, and last night.

But Tass news agency carried a scientific commentary on the flight of Mars 2 and Mars 3, which will take about six months to reach the red planet—so called because of the flat red regions which cover much of its surface.

It said that the most important things the two probes might achieve were to help clarify whether life might exist on Mars and in what form. Other questions they might give answers to were the structure of the Martian atmosphere and of the surface of the planet itself, the nature of the “canals” which criss-cross it and the reason why Mars had three kinds of clouds.

In Mars’s upper atmosphere there are dark blue clouds, while closer to the surface they are yel-

low—possibly the result of dust storms. The Martian surface is divided into three areas—dark and light coloured, and the polar icecaps, which grow and diminish rapidly according to season. Tass said that heavy ultraviolet radiation had been observed near the southern icecap, creating conditions highly dangerous to life forms as known on earth. But scientists still did not

know whether some other kind of life might be able to live on the planet, which is on an average 72deg. Fahrenheit colder than on earth.

One of the key issues in answering this question, which might be solved if Mars 2 and Mars 3 take close-up pictures of the planet, is whether Mars ever had oceans.

The tone of Soviet commentaries indicates this is what they will try to do, possibly approaching closer than the American Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 craft, which went within 2100 miles of Mars in 1969. But there is nothing more definite than this, and Mariner programme officials at Cape Kennedy say that the two Soviet craft, which weigh more than four tons, are big enough to carry a Mars landing craft. For all the information available, one of them could even be carrying a Marsokhod—a buggy similar to the Lunokhod vehicle now on the moon—but as the Soviet Union has only had one previous successful Mars shot this struck observers as unlikely at present. In another space development the Soviet Union today launched its 425th Cosmos satellite, the third to go into orbit in as many days. Tass said that it was orbiting the earth every 95.2 minutes between 318 and 345 miles above the ground.