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Mars Timeline

MARS TIMELINE
-4.5 billion years	Solar system born as Sun and planets condense from nebula of gas and dust
prehistory	Ancient observers note reddish "star" that does not obey the laws of the heavens
-350 BC	Eudoxus puts Earth at the center of the solar system
A.D. 140	Ptolemy, expanding on Eudoxus, establishes geocentric theory that survives until renaissance
1543	Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus..., and the Sun takes its rightful place at the center of the solar system
1609	Johannes Kepler announces in his book Astronomia Nova that Mars' orbit is elliptical, not circular
1659	Christiaan Huygens discovers Mars' rotation period to be, like Earth's, about 24 hours
1666	Giovanni Domenico Cassini notices white polar cap
1726	Jonathan Swift forecasts Mars has two moons in his book Gullivers Travels
1794	William Herschel suggests Mars' polar caps are seasonal concentrations of ice
1840	Wilhelm Beer and Johann Maedler publish first map of Mars
1877	Giovanni Schiaparelli discovers a network of lines he calls canali, or channels, on Mars' surface
1877	Asaph Hall discovers both of Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos
1894	Percival Lowell concludes canali are canal system created by intelligent life, the crusade begins
1898	H.G. Wells invents the concept of Martian invaders in his book The War of the Worlds
1907	Alfred Russel Wallace challenges Lowell's notion of intelligent life on Mars, citing high C02 levels and low pressure in atmosphere
1917	Edgar Rice Burrows publishes A Princess of Mars, the first in a series of 11 novels about the red planet
1938	Orson Welles panics thousands of listeners with his radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds
1965	First spacecraft to visit Mars, Mariner 4, returns images of southern hemisphere
1969	Mariners 6 and 7 continue the work of their predecessor
1971	Symposium at Caltech brings scientists and sci-fi writers together to discuss entanglement of Mars fact and fiction
1971	Mariner 9 maps all of Mars, revealing contrasting textures between hemispheres
1976	Vikings 1 and 2 return panoramic images, and find no chemical or metabolic evidence of life
1996	Controversial evidence of Martian life is reportedly found in meteorite ALH84001
1997	Mars Pathfinder bounces in for a landing - mission is wildly successful
1998	Mars Climate Orbiter launches; destroyed during atmospheric entry in 1999 due to English/Metric unit error
1999	Mars Polar Lander/Deep Space ll launches; all contact lost during atmospheric entry
2001	2001 Mars Odyssey enters orbit around Mars, functioning as com relay for Mars Exploration Rovers
2003	ESA mission Mars Express launches, all contact with lander lost during landing phase
2003	2 Mars Exploration Rovers, nicknamed Spirit and Opportunity, begin their enormously successful robotic exploration of surface
2005	Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launches, begins mapping and photo survey mission in 2006
2007	Phoenix Mars Lander launches.
2008	Phoenix lands in Martian arctic, finds water ice but no evidence of past or present life.
2011	Mars Science Laboratory, i.e. the Curiosity Rover, scheduled to launch in December.

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