FROM LIVING WORLD TO A DEAD EARTH: MARS IN AMERICAN SCIENCE SINCE THE SPACE AGE A thesis submitted To the Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Ian Varga May 2016 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials i Thesis written by Ian Varga B.A., Oberlin College, 2013 M.A., Kent State University, 2016 Approved by Matthew J. Crawford, PhD , Advisor Kenneth J. Bindas, PhD , Chair, Department of History James L. Blank, PhD , Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTERS 1. The Next Frontier: The Origins of Mars in Modern Space Science…………………….32 Background: Space, Mars, and Aliens in the 1950s…………………………………….35 The Ultimate Debate: Is There Life on Mars? ………………………………………….40 The First Images: Shifting the Debate…………………………………………………..50 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………57 2. The Beginning of the End?: Viking’s Climactic Impact on Martian Research…………60 Mars During the Mariner Years………………………………………………………………65 The Plan Viking………………………………………………………………………………72 Unsettling Discoveries………………………………………………………………………..80 Viking’s Legacy………………………………………………………………………………87 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….90 3. The Dead Earth: Mars as an Emblem of Recent American Space Exploration…………93 iii Space Science in Transition: From Viking through the Space Shuttle…………………96 Back from the Dead: Mars’s Resurgence……………………………………………….99 Mars Observer: A Failed Start………………………………………………………….107 A Rock and A Rover: A New Generation of Martian Missions………………………..110 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...116 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………...120 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………...138 iv Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support of a number of other scholars that contributed to my knowledge of the field and improved my writing. Foremost, I greatly appreciate the coordinated and extensive help from my advisor, Dr. Matthew Crawford, whose guidance was necessary for organizing this project and becoming familiar with the historiography. I would also like to thank other professors at Kent State University that contributed to the project or my writing, namely Dr. Mary Heiss, Dr. Kenneth Bindas, Dr. Timothy Scarrnechia, Dr. David Pereplyotchik, and Dr. Shane Strate. I would also like to express my gratitude to other students and colleagues that offered advice and suggestions throughout my tenure at Kent State. I also want to thank astrophysicist Dr. Daniel Stinebring of Oberlin College and astronomer Clyde Simpson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for educating me on Mars and space science, as well as for inspiring me. Additionally, NASA historian Dr. Erik Conway’s assistance in finding material was essential for initiating this project. v Introduction Few scientific research topics appear to draw as much publicity and discussion as Mars. Nonetheless, despite how Americans perceive it today, Mars’s twenty-first century prominence was far from an inevitable development during particular episodes in the 1960s and 1970s. Scientists at particular points in the late twentieth century were apprehensive that Mars, as well as the rest of planetary science, would fade into obscurity because of the red planet’s apparently unpromising and uninspiring characteristics. For example, after the first National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Martian mission in 1965, dubbed Mariner IV, scientists uncovered a world of craters and deserts, hardly supportive of living organisms. It mirrored portrayals of the Moon, lacking a particularly compelling trait for scientists to pursue further. Caltech researcher Robert Leighton commented after the mission that “it would appear that the Earth is perhaps more unique than we have thought,” expressing unease that no other world was as fruitful as our own.1 Without any signs of life, Mars was just another rocky world without a lure for human investigation, and, as a result, the newly formed Martian program in NASA might have come to a quick end. Shortly after the mission, the journal Science expressed concern that NASA would lose its planetary missions, including to Mars, because of congressional budget cuts. The journal explained that “most congressmen clearly have only the most superficial interest in such missions. Moreover, a program of planetary exploration, lacking a simple, easily understood goal comparable to the landing of a man on the moon, is too diffuse and abstract to readily arouse the enthusiasm of the man on the street.”2 Neither Congress nor the American public would support such expensive programs to Mars without a compelling, tangible reason. 1 Richard Lewis, “The Message from Mariner 4,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 21, November 1965, 39. 2 Luther Carter, “Planetary Exploration: How to Get by the Budget-cutters?,” Science 158, November 24 1967, 1026. 1 Fortunately for scientists invested in this research, they were able to devise a rationale that appealed to broad scientific and social interests in Martian life. This thesis’s main goal is to explain the development of scientific interest in Mars since the 1960s in order to understand why Mars’s importance to science has endured for over half a century despite these potential setbacks expeditions like Mariner IV caused. Since the 1960s, research related to Mars has undergone a number of developments that have contributed to its current distinction within space science. NASA initiated the Mars exploration program in 1964 with the development of the first Martian probe, Mariner IV, and it had completed eight expeditions to Mars by 2000, each producing significant discoveries that spurred new discourse on Mars’s past, present, and its future. Some missions, like Mariner IV, simply flew by the planet and sent images back home while others landed on its surface.3 Sometimes these data affirmed what scientists expected to find on Mars, but in many cases these missions introduced discrepancies that conflicted with how some scientists perceived the planet. Regardless of the results, scientific investment in Mars has never entirely lost its momentum, and the planet has recently grown into the most prioritized objective for NASA. Before delving into Mars’s history within scientific thought and its implications for the history of science, it is important to establish Mars’s basic scientific characteristics for context. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System and one of the closest planets to the Earth.4 Although it takes significantly longer for Mars to revolve around the Sun than Earth, its 3 See NASA’s website for a list of all Martian missions, http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/. 4 The exact distance between the Earth and Mars varies depending on its position relative to the Earth. At opposition, which is Mars’s closest approach to Earth, the planet is between 0.7 and 0.3 Astronomical Units (AU) from Earth, so on average half the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Mars was 93 million km from Earth during the last opposition in April 2014. See this table for more data, http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/MARS/APPENDS.HTM. 2 days are 24 hours and 40 minutes long, similar to the Earth.5 The planet, around two-thirds the size of Earth, is known for its strikingly red surface caused by oxidized iron, i.e. rust, found within its soil. Its atmosphere is thin, containing mostly carbon dioxide, and its surface temperature is, on average, -81 degrees Fahrenheit. It has two moons which are small asteroids captured in Mars’s gravity. Its surface is covered in large valleys, mountains, and craters with the exception of its north and south poles which contain water ice that recedes and expands as seasons on Mars change. Some of its valleys suggest that water once flowed through them. Overall, Mars has notable physical differences to the Earth, namely its atmosphere and lack of magnetic field, which have mired speculation about Mars’s habitability, but signs of water in its geography and geology suggest it was once more livable than now.6 Although Mars and the Earth share similarities in their histories, today they have notable differences. To understand how Mars has become a fixture in space science, this thesis will examine the ways scientists have researched Mars from the 1950s through the year 2000 and how perceptions of Mars among scientists have developed overtime based on observations from space probes. As mentioned above, Mars is a useful topic within space science because the scientific community has maintained interest in the planet for decades. This consistency is exceptional when compared to other major space science projects occurring from the 1950s to 2000. For example, the famous Apollo Moon landings sparked considerable attention from both scientists and the public for a few years from the late 1960s into the 1970s, but the spark fizzled for a variety of reasons, such as a lack of funding and interest among scientists and the public.7 Other 5 Martian days are sometimes called sols. 6 NASA has a comprehensive list of facts related to Mars on its website, http://mars.nasa.gov/allaboutmars/facts/. 7 Matthew Tribbe’s book, No Requiem for the Space Age: The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture where the author explains that Americans lost interest in lunar missions after the initial Apollo 11 landing. They believed the missions were wasteful in a time of war in Vietnam and demands for social and environmental reform. 3 planets comparable to Mars, such as Venus, have not received the same prioritization from NASA. The United States sent only half as many probes to Venus compared to Mars by 2000 despite the similar distances both planets have to Earth, and none were as ambitious as the Martian landers such as Viking. The outer planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, were relatively unknown objects until the 1980s, yet Mars was the destination of six missions from NASA by that point.8 Mars was exceptional compared to other planetary bodies. Of course, scientific interest in Mars did not begin in the mid-twentieth century.