Viking 2 entered Mars orbit on Aug. 7, 1976, and set about separating fact from fiction surrounding the red planet. In 1906, "Mars and its Mystery" (Little, Brown and Co.) theorized that a "large, irregular, dark region" contained "bodies of waters, or seas. Š From remote times it has been taken for granted by the best of minds that other worlds besides ours sustain life." Wernher von Braun, the German scientist who developed the Saturn V that launched Americans to the moon, and Willy Ley discussed long-held theories in "The Exploration of Mars," (The Viking Press/1956). They wrote: "This was the picture of Mars at mid-century: a small planet of which three-quarters is cold desert, with the rest covered with a sort of plant life that our biological knowledge cannot quite encompass." In the mid-1890s, astronomer Percival Lowell was lecturing on Martian features he called canals, Mark Littman stated in "Planets Beyond" (Wiley Sc...
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