For millennia, humans have been looking up at the red planet. For 40 years, researchers in Cornell's Department of Astronomy have been helping NASA get there. Here is a sampling of Cornell's involvement in missions to Mars:
The late Carl Sagan and Peter Gierasch -- still a busy Cornell researcher -- discover a new category of super hurricane-force winds on Mars. In 1971 Joseph Veverka joins the Cornell-NASA team on Mariner 9.
Sagan and Veverka serve as members of the imaging team. Gierasch analyzes data for weather systems and seasonal behavior.
Veverka is on the imaging team, helping design the camera to take high-spatial-resolution pictures of the surface of Mars and lower-spatial-resolution pictures of the surface and atmosphere. Steven Squyres is on the science team for the gamma-ray spectrometer, designed to reveal the elemental chemistry of the surface and look for subsurface ice.
Veverka and Peter Thomas serve on the imaging team that analyzes the surface of Mars in unprecedented detail.
Squyres serves on the imaging team for the German-built, high-resolution stereo camera. The launch vehicle fails, and the spacecraft falls back to Earth.
James Bell serves on the imaging team.
Bell and Robert J. Sullivan Jr., among others, report evidence of water, based on the analysis of more than 9,600 pictures of the surface. Gierasch analyzes data for dust-storm genesis and evolution. Bell also works on the Global Surveyor lander imaging team to help determine what types of minerals and rocks are present on the Martian surface.
NASA awards Cornell a $17 million contract to lead development of the Athena science package to be carried by a rover vehicle. Squyres heads the international science team to develop the highly complex package, consisting of a suite of experiments on board a roving vehicle.
Bell and Thomas, as part of the imaging team, monitor the atmosphere of Mars and capture color images.
NASA postpones the Athena rover segment of the 2001 Surveyor Mars mission and tentatively reschedules it for the 2003 Mars Surveyor launch.
Veverka, Thomas and Squyres are co-investigators on the Mars Descent Imager carried by the Polar Lander.
NASA again awards Cornell the contract for the science program in a redesigned Mars rover mission, this one to land in January 2004. The space agency says the mission will involve two rover vehicles, each carrying an identical science package. Squyres is named to lead the new Athena program. Bell heads the development of the rovers' panoramic camera system.
Squyres is a member of the science team for the gamma ray spectrometer, one of three instruments carried by Odyssey. The Odyssey is a small robotic spacecraft that will be the key communications link for the Mars rover mission.
Squyres is a member of the science team for the German-built, high-resolution stereo camera flown on the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter, with its Beagle 2 lander. On June 2 Mars Express sets off on its journey from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan on board a Soyuz Fregat launcher. A Mars landing is due on Dec. 26.
Spirit is launched aboard a Delta II rocket June 10, and Opportunity's launch is scheduled for June 28. The two rovers each carry an Athena science suite, a toolbox of six instruments that will be used to determine the history of climate and water at sites on Mars where conditions might once have been favorable to life. The Athena team is led by Squyres, assisted by a group of Cornell researchers and students. The two rovers are scheduled to bounce onto the Martian surface in 2004, Spirit on Jan. 4 and Opportunity on Jan. 25, and will operate from January to May 2004.
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