ANNOTATION

This book provides an overview of the mysteries and explorations of Mars. The Red Planet has fascinated humanity since antiquity. The invention of the telescope only deepened its enigmas, particularly with the discovery of the so-called ‘canals.’ This led to the idea of Martians living on the planet in science fiction. But is there really life on Mars? Do Martians exist? What are the canals? To answer questions like these space probes from the USSR and USA started the exploration of Mars in the 1960s. Going to Mars is not straightforward and reaching Mars is an engineering and technological feat. Ever since then we have continued our explorations of the Red Planet. We now have sophisticated rovers on the surface of Mars and orbiters in orbit around Mars. In the last few decades our knowledge of Mars has improved in leaps and bounds with new discoveries shedding more and more light on the mysterious planets past and future. This volume presents an outline of these explorations, a journey that continues to advance the bounds of human knowledge with hopes that one day humans will inhabit Mars.

Drawings by V. Korolkov
Translated from the Spanish and Typset in Scribus by Damitr Mazanav

Released on the web by The Mir Titles Project in 2025

This work is an Open Educational Resource (OER)

Creative Commons BY Share Alike 4.0 License

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Translators Note

One of the first books that I remember reading was All About the Telescope by Pavel Klushantsev translated to Marathi. The book got me fascinated about science in general and astronomy in particular.

So, when I saw this book by Klushantsev on Mars only available in Spanish, I could not resist from translating it. Though I started the work on this some years back, it was never completed for various reasons. One of them being the complex nature of typsetting in the book. So for this book I have used Scribus for typsetting and the results have been pleasing.

Since the book was written, our knowledge about Mars has increased by leaps and bounds. I have added an additional chapter in the book that summarises the various spacecraft since the 1990s that have taken our knowledge of Mars to the next level. The Martian surface has been revelead unprecendented detail with numerous rovers and orbiters around it. The attribution of images in the last section is provided with the images.

We now have active rovers on the surface of Mars and orbiters around it sending us vital information about the Red Planet. All this with hopes that humans would one day land there. It is to those future astronauts this translation and additional sections are dedicated.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

THAT LITTLE STAR IS MARS! 1
THE MYSTERIES OF MARS 14
WHERE CAN YOU LIVE 22
UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA OF MARS 32
WE MUST SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF “CANALS” 41
DO MARTIANS EXIST? 46
TRACES OF MARTIANS 56
ARE THE MARTIANS OUR ENEMIES 67
ARE MARTIANS OUR FRIENDS? 77
WE MUST FLY TO MARS 87
IS IT DIFFICULT TO REACH MARS 97
WHAT DID THE SPACE PROBES SEE FROM THEIR ORBIT 117
WATER! 129
THE SEARCH FOR LIFE ON MARS 136
IN THE FUTURE 152
FROM UNCERTAINTY TO DISCOVERY: MARS SINCE THE 1990s – Damitr Mazanav 163