March. Photographs from the NASA Archives

Ancient astronomers, attracted by the glowing red of Mars in the night sky, named it after their god of war. Mars captivates the humans, source of infinite speculations, territory that they have hope to live one day. Six decades of pioneering scientific missions led by NASA has gradually unraveled the mysteries of the red planet and revealed a world not so different from ours, where it is very likely that there existed life forms. Admire the first close-ups of Mars taken by the spacecraft Mariner 4 in 1965 — the first ever pictures of another planet — as well as historical illustrations from a time when curiosity had a length ahead of scientific progress. Science and art collide when NASA's subsequent orbital missions deliver aerial images ancient river beds, ice caps at its poles, storms of dust, vast canyons, dizzying volcanoes and landscapes as varied as unique. As they crisscross the rugged surface of Mars, the The US space agency's rovers act as extensions mechanics of humanity for 25 years; they dig holes, look for traces of water, scan the mountain ranges and the twilights panoramic.Thanks to hundreds of sophisticated photos taken from the rich NASA archives, we accompany its scientists in their quest for a Better understanding of Mars. Essays by the former scientific director NASA's James L. Green and JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning trace in detail the history of Martian exploration and the challenges that teams must meet to successfully complete each mission. The captions written by the Planetary scientist Emily Lakdawalla explains the content and technical context of each image; a foreword by the famous poet Nikki Giovanni and a Introduction by curator Margaret A. Weitekamp offers a thought-provoking on the importance of Mars in our culture and imagination. First a riddle distant, Mars has become a tangible objective whose path we can observe smallest grain of sand and this book salutes the extraordinary progress made by NASA, which bring us closer every day to an understanding complete of this neighboring world.