Earthlings launch their most ambitious invasion of Mars this week, with the planned liftoff of the first in a 10-year series of robotic explorers to the Red Planet.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., just after noon tomorrow. It should begin orbiting Mars on Sept. 11 for a two-year study of the planet's atmosphere, its surface geology and interior physics.
Two more spacecraft -- NASA's Mars Pathfinder and Russia's Mars '96 mission -- will join the Mars-bound squadron during the next four weeks.
Between them, they are packing 28 instruments, two missile-like surface "penetrators," three landers and a six-wheel surface rover, all designed to study Mars' rocks, weather and its capacity to support life -- past or present.
Although planning began years ago, the Mars missions are setting off just as scientific interest in Mars, and the possibility of life elsewhere in the solar system, is surging.
Two teams of scientists in recent months have reported that meteorites blasted from Mars by collisions eons ago appear to hold "strong" mineral and fossil evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.
The Pathfinder mission will land first, on July 4. And soon after that, anyone with Internet access should be able to dial up the mission's home page via computer for the latest scenery and weather from the landing site.
"By sitting in your home and looking at the video screen in almost real time, you will be able to see it," said NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin. "I can't think of anymore exciting mission we've had in the last few decades."
If they make it, the three spacecraft will be the first to study Mars since NASA's two Viking landers touched down in 1976, when Gerald R. Ford was president.
Viking's instruments scratched the Martian dirt and sniffed inconclusively for signs of life. They also sent back the first red-hued TV images and frigid weather reports from the planet's surface.
The last Viking radio went dead in 1983.
Scientists also hope their 1996 missions will redeem the failures of NASA's $1 billion Mars Observer spacecraft, destroyed by a fuel explosion as it approached Mars in 1993; and the Soviet Union's twin 1989 Mars/Phobos missions, which failed in Martian orbit.
This year's missions are just the first wave of the new Mars explorers. NASA plans to send spacecraft to Mars four more times between now and 2005 -- each time the Earth and Mars are properly aligned for an attempt.
