A trip to Mars would be much longer and effects could be much more extreme. The organization aims to launch a Mars lander and an orbiting communications satellite in 2020, a scouting rover and second commsat (which will circle the sun instead of the Red Planet) in 2022, and six separate cargo missions in 2024.
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Sorry, skywatchers: Despite what you may have heard, Mars won’t look as big as the moon overhead tonight (Aug. 27). “Mars will look as large as the full moon” and ended with the message in capital letters: “NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN”.
The idea is that Mars will pass so close to Earth it will, if the rumours are to be believed, appear to be the same size as the moon – creating the impression of two moons rising together. Typically, Mars and Earth are about 140 million miles (225 million km) apart.
The “Mars Hoax” has been popping up every August 27 since 2003, when it was born in a widely misinterpreted email.
It might be recalled that on July 7, 2005 comparable message was despatched saying, “Earth is catching up with Mars [for]the closest strategy between the 2 planets in recorded historical past”. More recently, Facebook and Twitter have become the preferred medium for perpetuating the myth. In this year’s edition, a doctored photo showing two moon-size objects over some temple-like structure is providing an illustration for the hoax. But people are bombarded with information and stories online, and a gut response of “That’s cool!” is all it takes to click “Share”, he said. The so-called “Mars Hoax” has surfaced before, starting around 2003 when it circulated in an email titled “Mars Spectacular”.
Both planets have been the subjects of large, flashy research missions, including the Mars rovers and the recent New Horizons flyby of Pluto.
Robot explorers are already there, leaving tracks in the red dust and gathering data for scientists safe on planet Earth. Evidence of past life on Mars would have major implications for how earthlings think of themselves and their place in the solar system. Especially if the Mars colonists are Americans, they will all remember the American revolution as part of their personal mythology, and will not take kindly to a faraway government that claims ownership of a new civilization. Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” and movies like the upcoming Ridley Scott film “The Martian” keep Mars in the public eye.
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The hoax actually does have its origins in actual science, well kind of.
