Launched in 1977, Voyager II explored the outer planets and their weird moons, moving ever deeper into space, into regions completely mysterious to us earthlings. On board is a gold-coated phonograph record, containing 116 images of earth and its inhabitants, ninety minutes of music and an audio essay of earth's sounds. The pace of technology has been so rapid that Voyager's computing capabilities are outdated ,equal to just a fraction of a domestic PC. The computer subsystems on Voyager contain a total of only 63,000 words of memory storage.

In 1976, the search for life and the exploration of the solar system continued with the Viking mission. Its destination: Mars, the mission: to land robot explorers on the red planet.

On board were cameras and instruments designed to sample the Martian atmosphere and analyse the planet's dry soil for signs of life. But, no life was found.

...exciting, how they compare to the Viking land site....well, as you can see...

At NASA, Michael Meyer runs the administration's exobiology program, the search for life beyond earth. For him, the Viking mission was not at all disappointing.

'Viking was very successful and that it sent two spacecrafts that landed on the surface, and a part of their purpose was to measure whether or not there is life on Mars. And the experiments were very successful, in that they went through, they did the measurements, and, but, the reactions that they found were not consistent with life.'

But just because the Viking landers didn't conclusively find life on Mars, doesn't mean life isn't there. It may nestle on the surface or underground. Mars more than any other planet has tantalized us with the notion of extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise. Since Viking took the first pictures, one strange surface feature, called The Face on Mars, has attracted much attention. Some believe it's an attempt by another civilization to contact us.

The Martian craze really took off about one hundred years ago. The Clark telescope at the Lowell observatory, Flagstaff Arizona. This great instrument was used to produce some of the most famous drawings of the red planet. The artist was the observatory's founder, Percival Lowell. Lowell thought the aliens were trying to make the best use of the available precious water supplies, building a network of canals to transfer water from the polar to the equatorial regions, a sort of planet-wide irrigation system. He wrote extensively about these ideas.

A few yards from the building housing his beloved telescope, Lowell's tomb is a monument to Mars. his theories were at first embraced, then denounced. Lowell was ridiculed by the scientific world, but he never stopped believing in the Martian canals. Ironically, both Lowell Observatory and life on Mars theories are legitimate and respected today."He built up interest in Mars .."

phonograph:US OLD USE FOR record player留聲機(jī)，唱機(jī)

in that:because

conclusively:without any doubt 毫無疑問地,令人信服的

craze:an activity, object or idea that is extremely popular, usually for a short time狂熱，時(shí)尚；流行；風(fēng)行一時(shí)的東西

ridicule:to laugh at someone in an unkind way嘲笑，奚落