Discovery of Mars
Written by Fraser Cain
Mars is one of the 5 classical planets visible to the unaided eye. And so, it has been known to ancient people for thousands of years. You can't really say that any one person "discovered" Mars because it became bright in the sky every 2 years or so.
However, the ancient Babylonians were one of the first people to give Mars a name. They called it Nergal, after thier deity of fire, war and destruction. The Greeks called it Ares after their god of war, and the Romans renamed it Mars after their version of Ares.
It wasn't until 1609, when Galileo Galilei first turned his primitive telescope on the Red Planet.
In 1659, the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens used a more advanced telescope to observe Mars, and was able to spot a dark spot on the planet, which astronomers now think is Syrtis Major. He went on to discover the planet's south pole ice cap a few years later.
In 1666, Giovanni Cassini was able to make even more detailed observations of Mars, and determined the planet's rotational period.
Exploring Mars has a very detailed timeline of Mars discoveries, from early times, right up until the present. I highly recommend looking through this.
Astronomers observed Mars with better and better telescopes over the next centuries, but it wasn't until 1964, when NASA's Mariner 4 became the first spacecraft to make a flyby of Mars.
And now we have a huge fleet of spacecraft orbiting Mars, and rovers crawling its surface. Mars has become the most studied place in the Solar System (after the Earth, of course).
Here is the most comprehensive list of missions to Mars, compiled by NASA (although they included all the Soviet missions as well).
Finally, if you'd like to learn more about Mars in general, we have done several podcast episodes about the Red Planet at Astronomy Cast. Episode 52: Mars, and Episode 91: The Search for Water on Mars.
Filed under: Astronomy
