nature insight: Mars

Mars
Vol. 412, No. 6843 (12 July 2001).
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Cover illustration
The Argyre Basin on Mars, adapted from an image combining topography from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter and a Viking colour image mosaic.
(Image courtesy of MOLA Science Team and G. Shirah, NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio.)

This summer, Mars appears larger and brighter to us than it has for over a decade. We are reminded that each time we take a closer look at the red planet, the new observations seem only to increase our sense of wonder at how many mysteries remain unresolved regarding this most Earth-like of the other planets in our Solar System. At the heart of our fascination with Mars, at least over the past century, has been the possibility that liquid water exists at or near the martian surface and therefore that life might have taken hold elsewhere in our Solar System — or even exist there today.

And so, on the heels of some dramatic successes (and failures) in our attempts to deploy probes to study the martian surface, the time is appropriate to take stock of our understanding of present-day Mars as well as the geological and environmental evolution that has taken place since its formation, some four billion years ago.

Most of our information on the interior of Mars comes to us from remote sensing of the martian surface and subsequent inferences on how the surface has evolved over geological timescales in response to both geodynamic processes in the martian interior and erosional processes at its surface. At the heart of this Nature Insight, a series of interrelated Review Articles describes this evolution, from the differentiation and solidification of the martian core to the dynamics of its atmosphere.

At the next opposition of Mars in 2003, while a new set of landers and rovers will be hurling towards Mars, we will be able to gaze upon the brightest and biggest Mars in the night sky than at any time in the past 1,000 years as we ponder what new surprises await us from the martian surface.

John VanDecar Senior Editor