"That Mars is habitable by beings of some sort or other is as certain as it is uncertain what these beings may be," wrote Percival Lowell in the early 20th century. While other astronomers had their ...

Fifty years ago this weekend, NASA's Mariner 9 probe went into orbit around Mars. This pioneering mission revolutionized our ideas about Mars and, with humans looking to head that way, is a timely ...

What does it take for a recalcitrant physicist to demand a camera for a spacecraft, against doubters and technical obstacles? For Mariner 4, it resulted in one of the most revolutionary moments in ...

November 13, 1971 is a red-letter date in the history of exploration. Thirty-one years ago today the American spacecraft, Mariner 9, became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Imagery from ...

You have to feel for Mariner 9. First, the spacecraft loses its twin, Mariner 8, in a launch failure just weeks before Mariner 9 itself was scheduled to blast off toward Mars on May 30, 1971. Not only ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. On November 13, 1971, Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars. At the time, scientists didn't know much about the Red ...

A ‘real-time data translator’ machine converted a Mariner 4 digital image data into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the official processed image, employees from the Voyager ...