The A to Z of Mars Exploration Quiz

Answer: Ares

Ares is the Greek equivalent of Mars. The study of the physical features of Mars is known as 'aerography', the earthly equivalent of geography.

Answer: Beagle 2

Unfortunately contact was lost with Beagle 2 soon after it separated from its mother craft Mars Express and it was never heard from again. Repeated attempts to contact Beagle 2 or spot it on the surface using high definition photography from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have not been successful. Developed on a shoestring budget it is speculated that a miscalculation resulted in the probe being destroyed on landing. Beagle 2 was named after HMS Beagle, the ship on which Charles Darwin made his epic voyage of discovery.

Answer: Canals

Schiaparelli used the word 'canale' to describe his discovery which when translated into English became 'canals'. This implied that they were an artificial construct of some kind of intelligent Martians and caused a great sensation at the time. This was in no way Schiaparelli's intention as his best guess was that these channels were natural formations.

This did not stop a world itching for something to spark its imagination and the whole Martian canal speculation became a subject of much debate. American astronomer Percival Lowell developed the theme that a civilisation on a drying planet had constructed the canals to move water to the equatorial regions to sustain their crops an observation which appeared to explain the seasonal wave of darkening which enveloped the planet during summer. Alas photography from Mariner space probes in the 1960s revealed no evidence of artificial canals and they were put down to optical illusions and the product of an overactive imagination.

Answer: Dust

The Great Dust Storm of 1971 lasted three months, obscured most of the planet and at its peak rose to a height of 60 km in the atmosphere. These dust storms are seasonal and mostly occur during the southern hemisphere summer at perihelion when the planet is closest to the sun. Unfortunately the Soviet probes Mars 2 and 3, a pair of orbiters and landers, were pre-programmed and were unable to return much useful data as the planet was totally obscured by dust.

The Mars 2 lander became the first probe to make it to the surface but was destroyed on landing and the Mars 3 lander survived long enough to return one partial picture from the surface but succumbed to the storm after transmitting for only 20 secs.

The Orbiters went through their programme of photography returning pictures of a blank disc obscured by dust. Mariner 9 took a faster trajectory and became the first probe to orbit the planet but was able to wait out the storm before beginning its primary mission of photographing the planet.

As the dust cleared scientists were amazed to see a planet of towering volcanoes and plunging canyons a totally unexpected finding given the results from earlier Mariner missions.

Answer: Express

Mars Express went into orbit around Mars on Christmas day 2003. Its piggyback companion Beagle 2 was lost on impact with the Martian surface. The mission was put together in a record time of three years, hence the name, using spare parts from other satellites and it was launched from Baikonur cosmodrome using a Russian Soyuz Fregat launcher.

It has returned some spectacular photos including pictures of ice covered craters and has confirmed the presence of CO2 and water ice on the South Pole.

Answer: Faster

The first fruits of the Faster Better Cheaper approach were the successful Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor missions launched in 1996. These were the first successful missions to Mars since the Viking missions over 20 years before. Viking had cost over 2 billion dollars and spent a decade in development while Pathfinder had cost only 260 million dollars and was designed, built and launched in just three years.

However this concept was bought into question when the Mars Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander were lost two years later to causes related to human error.

Answer: Gusev crater

Gusev crater was named after a fictional cosmonaut from the movie and novel 'Aelita' which tells the story of how Gusev and his companion instigated a revolution to overthrow an oppressive ruling race on Mars. This theme struck a chord when it was written in the Soviet Union of the 1920s.
Gusev crater was chosen as a target because it had a large channel running into it and it was believed there would be evidence of rock strata laid in the bottom of a lake bed. In the event the crater bed was revealed to be overlain with basaltic deposits which would have buried any strata laid at the bottom of a lake. Spirit was retargeted to drive to the Columbia hills some 2 km distant where important new discoveries were made.
Spirit and Opportunity far exceeded their original 90 day missions and were still operating more than five years later.

Answer: Hellas Basin

The Hellas Basin in the Southern Hemisphere is over 7 km deep and 2300 km in diameter. It is so low that it is the only point on the planet where water could exist as a liquid. The atmospheric pressure is 11.5 millibars nearly twice that of Martian Sea Level (MSL). MSL is defined as where the triple point of water occurs i.e. the point at which water sublimes directly from ice to vapour at 0 degrees centigrade at a pressure of 6 millibars. For comparison the mean sea level atmospheric pressure on Earth is 1000 millibars.

Answer: Ice

Dubbed 'Holy Cow' by members of the science team the unmistakable patch of ice had been blasted clear by exhaust from the landing rockets. Phoenix had landed in the North Polar Region on the Vastitas Borealis (Great Northern Waste) and this finding was direct proof that the region consisted of a vast ice sheet directly beneath the surface.

This observation was confirmed by the findings of other instruments on the lander.

Answer: Jet

Established as a branch of Caltech the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) original mission was to research missile development for the US Army. JPL became a branch of the newly formed NASA in 1958 and was given responsibility for conducting all of their Lunar and Planetary missions.

In recent years Universities have been contracted to propose and develop Mars missions which are then implemented through JPL. For example the MER's were developed by a team led by Jim Bell from Cornell University and Pathfinder and Phoenix were developed by teams led by Peter Smith from the University of Arizona.

Answer: Korolev

The identity of the Chief Designer was revealed to be Sergei Korolev only after he died in 1966. It was Korolev's guiding hand in the face of political indifference that pushed for the launch of Sputnik in 1957. After this success he was looked on with great favour by the Soviet leadership especially as the triumphs kept coming with the first dog in space, first lunar missions and finally the first Man in Space. By contrast, the attempts to launch the first Mars probes during this heady period were a failure due to launcher problems.

As an indication of his prestige Khrushchev had planned to announce yet another Soviet triumph during a lengthy visit to the US in October 1960 but alas it was not to be on this occasion. This was the visit during which Khrushchev gave his famous shoe banging speech at the UN at a time when Soviet confidence was at its highest.

Answer: Longitude

Martian geographers or 'aerographers' have used a crater identified from Mariner 9 photography called 'Airy O' located in the Sinus Meridiani as the Prime Meridian of Longitude. This is the Martian equivalent of the Greenwich Meridian on Earth. The Rover Opportunity landed in this vicinity in 2004.

Answer: Mariner

The first fly-by Mariners 4,6,7 revealed Mars to be a cratered body like the moon with a disappointingly thin atmosphere and temperatures which would not sustain liquid water, the pre-requisite of life. The picture completely changed in 1972 when the 'Great Dust Storm' cleared and scientists were stunned to see a world of towering volcanoes, huge canyons and the unmistakable signs that water had once flowed across the surface of the planet.

The Mars missions were a series of Soviet missions which established a new long distance communication record with Mars 1 and achieved the first landings on the surface of the planet with Mars 2 and 3. However the information returned from these and others in the series was somewhat limited due to a series of technical glitches and just plain bad luck!

Milstar is a US military communications satellite. Messenger is a NASA mission to Mercury launched in 2004.

Answer: Nozomi

Nozomi or 'Hope' was intended to go into Mars orbit and study the outer Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. However, it soon developed fuel problems while en-route and when its electronics were fried by a solar flare it was abandoned. It used a unique series of gravity assists between the earth and the moon to send it on a Mars trajectory.

Answer: Mars Odyssey

From its polar orbit Mars Odyssey was able to scan most of the Martian surface and the Northern and Southern Polar regions. Among other findings it confirmed that the North Pole is composed mostly of water ice and the south polar cap is much colder because the winters are longer and is composed of a surface layer of dry ice (frozen CO2) underlain by water ice. It also discovered caves in the volcanic Tharsis region on the slopes of Arsia Mons. Using its Thermal Imaging System (THEMIS) Mars Odyssey has been able to provide pictures of the surface in infrared light which has led to new discoveries about the nature of Mars.
Mars Observer was the last of the expensive flagship missions and whose loss in 1992 led to the 'faster, better, cheaper' approach. Some of its spare parts were used for the highly successful Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) which operated in Mars orbit for over 10 years.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter went into Polar orbit around Mars in 2007 and its HiRise camera is providing images of the surface in unprecedented detail.
Opportunity is the one of the long lived Rovers exploring the surface.

Answer: Phobos

Phobos (fear) and its smaller companion Deimos (panic) were named after the companions of the Greek god Ares. Phobos is a potato shaped object of some 27 km along its long axis and is dominated by a large crater called Stickney named after Asaph Hall's wife. It orbits in a close equatorial orbit less than 2 planetary radii from the surface. With an orbital period of 7 hrs 39 mins it moves faster than the planet's rotation so an observer on the surface would see it rise in the west and set in the east three times a day (sol). It is in synchronous orbit or orbital lock always presenting the same face to Mars and it is predicted that it will crash or disintegrate in orbit in about 50 million years.
In 1988 the Russians launched a pair of sophisticated spacecraft called Phobos to explore the moon but they failed before they could complete their primary mission.
Phoenix was a lander which explored the North Polar Region in 2008.
Phoebe is an icy Saturnian moon. Pallas is the second largest asteroid.

Answer: Yes

Great efforts have taken to prevent this contamination by sterilizing landers before they are launched from earth. For example in the 1970's the Viking landers underwent an extensive sterilization process and were enclosed in an air tight cocoon before they were launched. Later when they were sent on their Mars trajectory from earth orbit they were deliberately aimed to miss the planet so that the unsterilized third stage of the Titan III E launcher would not impact on the surface and contaminate it.

The trajectory was later adjusted by a mid course correction burn by Viking itself.

Answer: Rover

These two Rovers better known as Spirit and Opportunity utilised the air-bag landing technique successfully tested by Pathfinder over six years before. Initially designed to last 90 days or 'sols' they have far exceeded their builder's expectations and were still operational over five years later. Among other finding they have discovered rock layers that could only have been formed underwater and have observed dust devils which have fortuitously cleaned dust from their solar panels enabling continued operations.

Answer: Sol

The Martian day or 'Sol' is two minutes longer than the Martian Sidereal day which measures the rotation of the planet as viewed from the sun. The movement of Mars on its orbital track around the sun as it completes one rotation accounts for this difference.
The synodic period is the time required as viewed from earth for Mars to return to a certain alignment with the sun in relation to the background stars.
The term 'sol' has been adopted by research teams supporting landers to measure the amount of time their mission has been on the surface. This has led to such interesting neologisms as 'yestersol' (yesterday), 'tosol' (today), and 'nextersol' (tomorrow).

Answer: Tharsis Rise

The Tharsis Rise or Bulge in the Northern Hemisphere is directly opposite the Hellas Basin in the Southern Hemisphere and it is speculated that shock waves from the impact which created the latter focused on the opposite side of the planet resulting in this high level of volcanic activity. Because there are no plate tectonics on Mars the volcanoes remained above their magma sources and attained their massive size. From the peak of Olympus Mons to the bottom of the Hellas Basin there is a vertical elevation of 31 km making Mars the planet with the roughest surface in the Solar System. By comparison on Earth the elevation from the top of Mt Everest to the bottom of the Marianas Trench is 19 km.

Answer: Utopia

Viking 2 landed on Utopia Planitia in September 1976 using a combination of entry cone, parachute, rocket, and braking rocket for the last 2000m of descent. The system of entering orbit first and surveying potential landing sites before landing proved wise as the original sites chosen for Viking 2 and its sister Viking 1 proved unsuitable and new sites had to be found.

This was a degree of sophistication which was not incorporated into the Soviet Mars probes which were pre-programmed and became a contributing factor to their high failure rate. Viking 1 landed at Chryse Planitia or Plains of Gold.

Answer: Viking

The Viking spacecraft were orbiter/lander combinations weighing nearly four tonnes at launch and required the powerful Titan III E Centaur rocket to send them on their journey. The Viking 1 and 2 landers sent back a wealth of scientific data but the biology experiments returned frustratingly ambiguous results which could be interpreted as the result of biological activity or of some type of exotic chemistry. The radioisotope powered landers were remarkably long lived with lander 1 lasting nearly six years and lander 2 lasting nearly four years. The orbiters were equally successful mapping the planet in unprecedented detail and lasting 2 and 4 years respectively. In a final triumph they were able to provide support for Einstein's Theory of Relativity when their transmissions were delayed when travelling near the sun. The bonanza of information returned by these two missions kept scientists busy for a generation.

Voyager was the name given to two spacecraft which conducted a Grand Tour of the outer planets during the 1970s. Vega was the name given to a pair of Soviet probes flew by Venus on their way to Halley's Comet in 1986. Vanguard was them name given by the US Navy to a launcher that was intended to place America's first satellite in orbit.

Answer: Window

Suitable Launch Windows occur about every 780 days and this corresponds to the synodic period of Mars as seen from Earth. This is known as 'opposition' and corresponds to the time when the Earth and Mars are on the same side of the sun and closest to each other.

The minimum energy trajectory used by rocket men to aim their craft at Mars is called a Hohmann Transfer Ellipse after the German mathematician who discovered it. The transit time from Earth to Mars can range anywhere between 5 and 8 months as no opposition is exactly the same.

This is due to the fact that Mars has a highly eccentric orbit, some 8%, compared to the 3% eccentricity of the Earth's orbit around the sun so neither planet is in the same position relative to each other after one revolution of the sun. One of the closest oppositions in 60,000 years took place in 2003 and three missions were dispatched to take advantage of this opportunity.

Answer: Yogi

The Pathfinder landing site at Ares Vallis was chosen because of the great range of rock types in the area of which the bear shaped 'Yogi' proved to be the largest. The Pathfinder lander used the unique feature of air bags to cushion the final landing.

When it finally bounced to a halt the bags deflated allowing the craft to expose its solar panels and reveal a small 10.5 Kg rover named Sojourner. Sojourner explored the area within 100m of the lander and returned 550 images from the surface. The NASA website for the mission was swamped with record traffic and was perhaps a reflection of an information starved generation which had not seen a Mars mission in 20 years. The landing site was named the 'Carl Sagan Memorial Station' in honour of the great astronomer who tirelessly promoted the cause of space exploration to the general public.

Answer: Zond

These Zond probes caused a great deal of speculation among Western observers because they did not seem to fit any particular pattern and the Soviet media gave them little coverage. Zond 2 was dispatched to Mars in 1964 using the same launch window as Mariner 4. Observers initially wrote off the Zond 2 mission as a failure because of the low profile it was given by the Soviets. However with the changes in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union it was revealed that it did achieve a number of notable firsts including the use of plasma engines to make mid course corrections. Radio contact was lost with the probe but its trajectory took it past Mars at a distance of 1500 km in August 1965 one month after the historic Mariner 4 fly-by.

Sources used for this quiz include: National Geographic, The Pocket Guide to Mars by Robert Goodwin, Russian Planetary Exploration by Brian Harvey, and Wikipedia.