Live From Mars ended in December 1997. Please see Mars Team Online for a more recent project about Mars.

In the six weeks leading up to each live television broadcast, we will have a weekly Challenge Question to get your brain cells firing.

You are invited to send original student answers to us. We will list the names of these folks online, and token prizes will be given out to a small number of the students with the best answers. Send your answers to Jan Wee at jwee@mail.arc.nasa.gov. PLEASE include the words "CHALLENGE QUESTION" in the subject of the email.

Question #6: Answer due by midnight PDT, May 1, l997

What five features make Mars most like Earth? And, what five features make Mars most unlike Earth?

We hope students will come up with some geologically correct answers, but also with some clever, provocative and tongue-in- cheek comparisons!

ALIKE:

• atmosphere: though Mars' is much thinner than Earth's
• weather: Mars has frost, clouds, but in the current epoch no "precipitation"
• channels that seem to have been carved by running water
• Grand Canyon and Vallis Marineris
• Earthquakes and Marsquakes
• impact craters
• volcanoes
• night and day
• fossil evidence of past life (this will only be accepted if students say it's "definite" for Earth, "possible" for Mars, reflecting continuing scientific debate about what the features in ALH 84001 really mean!). See below, Different!!!

  DIFFERENT:
  

• liquid water
• plate tectonics: though there are Marsquakes, the mighty volcanoes show that the crust has sat over long-lived lava hot spots, rather than riding over them, and forming features like the chain of islands we know as Hawaii
• no ozone layer on Mars protecting the surface
• no large, surface life (plants/animals) on Mars compared to Earth
• Mars' day and year are longer than Earth's
• Vallis Marineris was formed by rifting, not carved by a river, as was the Grand Canyon
• fossil evidence of past life (but this will only be accepted if students say it's "definite" for Earth, "possible" for Mars, reflecting continuing scientific debate about what the features in ALH 84001 really mean!) See above, Alike!!! - no students participating in Live From Earth

Question #5: Week of April 21, l997

BRUSH UP ON YOUR GREEK!
There is a letter of the Greek alphabet that is very important both to launching NASA's current Mars missions and to getting to Mars. What is that letter? Also, explain how it is used.

Both Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor were launched aboard Delta II rockets from Cape Canaveral, as seen during LFM program 101. "Delta V" is what rocket scientists (including the Navigation teams who were featured during program 102) call the "change in velocity" that keeps a spacecraft on course for a distant planet. Trajectory correction maneuvers fine tune the route by a combination of precise timing, and carefully controlled "burns" providing additional velocity in specific direction.

Question #4: Week of April 14, l997

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN Olympus Mons is the highest feature on Mars. What is its counterpart on Earth? Be forewarned: it is not Mount Everest!

If you measure Mauna Kea, Hawaii, from ocean floor to peak, you will find that it is higher than Mt. Everest, Nepal -- about 30,000 feet compared to Everest's 29,000 feet.

Bonus Question:
If you think about how astronomers measure the height of features on Mars, you'll have a clue to help this question. What do we mean?

Answer
For Mars, astronomers use the "datum level" -- the reference surface at which atmospheric pressure is 6.1 millibars (the pressure at the triple point of water) -- to give a baseline for measurement of altitude. On Earth we use sea level, but as CQ#3 reminded us, that would currently be impractical to do on Mars -- though some astronomers think there may once have been an ocean on Mars, or at least lakes of liquid water, now lost to space or locked in permafrost.

Question #3: Week of April 7, l997

DIFFERENCES & SIMILARITIES -- CAN YOU NAME THEM?
Discount (ignore, forget about...) one feature that makes Earth unique among the planets (but maybe not the moons) of our solar system, and Earth and Mars are almost identical in a certain aspect.

What do you have to take away from Earth? In what way are Earth and Mars then alike?

If you discount Earth's OCEANS, then the surface area of Earth and Mars -- the dry land of Earth and the surface area of Mars -- are almost the same. (509,600,000 km squared) (Source of surface area: The Cambridge Fact Finder)

Bonus Question:
What do we mean when we say that "this feature" may make Earth unique when compared to other planets (but maybe not the moons) in our solar system?

ANSWER:
Many astronomers think that Jupiter's moon Europa may hide an ocean of liquid water under an icy crust, making it the only body in our solar system, apart from Earth, with liquid water. The Galileo spacecraft is continuing its successful exploration of the Jovian system, and has seen what looks like pack ice, forming then breaking up and reforming in characteristic patterns.

Question #2: Week of March 31, l997

WHO ARE THEY?
Mars has always been a place that has engaged our imagination, as well as our scientific curiosity. In the 19th and 20th centuries two men with almost the same last name created the exact same titles in two different media. Who were these men and what did they write and produce?

In 1898 H.G. Wells wrote the 17-chapter novel "The War of the Worlds." Forty years later, Orson Welles adapted the novel for radio and on the night before Halloween in 1938, he starred in a radio drama by the same name. This began the most stunning single program ever broadcast on radio. It set off a wave of mass hysteria as Welles described in breathless radio news bulletins and on-the- scene reports that Martians had invaded New Jersey. Even though CBS made four announcements during the radio show that it was "only a play," may listeners did not year them. Panic swept through New Jersey as people fled their homes and covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs to protect themselves from the reported poison gases!

Question #1: Week of March 24, l997

If geology is the study of the Earth (from the Greek geo-earth and logos-knowledge) what should we properly call the study of Mars?

Your answer can be either etymologically correct, with Greek derivation, or more humorous if you like!

Answer

Areology - Ares is Greek for Mars, just as Geos is the Greek word for Earth. (Remember Pathfinder will land in Ares Vallis, the Valley of Ares.)

Dave Bogan -- 8th grader at Taylor Road Middle School -- Alpharetta, Georgia -- gave the exact answer!

Honorable Mention: Matt Bohnhoff and MESA Class of Provo, Utah.

A list of answers from all students who submitted them will be posted on the Live From Mars Web site soon.