The rainbow planet

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33693, 16 November 1974, Page 19

The rainbow planet

' tN.Z.P.A.-Btuter—Copyright) MOSCOW. Autumn on Mars, the so-called “Red Planet,” is a riot of blue, green, and orange, according to latest Soviet observations.

Tass, the Soviet news agency, has reported belated findings from the four unmanned Mars probes early this year, generally deemed failures.

Summarising a report in a scientific journal, the agency said photographs radioed back over more than 200 m kilometres showed a range of hues in the planet’s southern hemisphere.

The plains were orange, the gently-sloping flanks of the massive Martian mountains were blue, and craters were a Bluish-Green. The colour of the craters implied that the deeper rock was

different from the surface rock, Tass said.

But more work has still to be done, to confirm the accuracy of the probes’ colour pictures. From the Tass report, it seems that scientists have been able to salvage a considerable amount of information from the four vehicles. This includes data showing that water vapour is unevenly distributed over the planes surface. One of the probes detected more moisture than had earlier unmanned missions to other parts of the planet. Polarised photographs indicate that the martian surface is covered with a layer of what Tass described as crushed material. This fits in with results from America’s Mariner marsorbiters.

They showed the surface to be pitted with meteorite craters, and — in many regions — covered with orange dust deposited by the

occasional globe-wide storms. Foreign reports have suggested that the Russians want to land an automatic rover on Mars, as they have done on the moon. This gathers up and analyses the soil, radioing results to Earth, or sending samples back by rocket.