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Special Section:
Life on Mars?

Sites of the Week for July 1997

Week of July 7, 1997

Contact

Set to debut this Friday in North America, Contact is the film adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel about scientists who receive a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence, with instructions for the humans to build a device to allow them to travel to see them. This site naturally has a lot of information about the movie, but there's also a good collection of general SETI information here as well, so you can find out about real SETI work as well as what's portrayed in the movie.

http://www.contact-themovie.com/

Reaching for the Red Planet

The successful landing of Mars Pathfinder, and the stunning images of the surface of the planet returned by it, have stoked considerable interest in Mars exploration. One way to keep that interest alive when the school year starts in the fall is through educational programs. "Reaching for the Red Planet" is one such program, designed by a grad student at the University of Colorado at Boulder for students in grades 4-6. The students work through a several-week curriculum focused on planning a Mars colony. This will go a long way to keeping students, future Mars colonists, interested in exploring the Red Planet.

http://lyra.colorado.edu/sbo/mary/redplanet.html

Week of July 14, 1997

Mars Virtual Landing Sites

Can't get enough of the views of the Martian landscape provided by Mars Pathfinder? Want to look at something new? Check out the virtual reality Martian landscapes created at NASA's Ames Research Center. Using QuickTime VR, you can view panoramas of Ares Vallis (the Pathfinder landing site), Chryse Planitia (a Viking landing site), and other locales, including Olympus Mons. You need to use a Quicktime VR plug-in (which comes with Netscape 3.0 and later), but the stunning 360-degree views which you can view is worth any plug-ins you need to download!

http://www.mars-sites.arc.nasa.gov/

Week of July 21, 1997

Destination Mars: Pathfinder

There have been a lot of sites created in the last few weeks to cover the latest from the Mars Pathfinder mission. One of the best (outside SpaceViews own site, of course!) is the "Destination Mars: Pathfinder" site from the British astronomy magazine Astronomy Now. They provide frequent updates with the basics of the mission, and links to images and other sites where appropriate. Nothing fancy, but the content here is some of the best on the Web about Pathfinder.

http://www.astronomynow.com/mars/pathfinder/pathfinder.html

Week of July 28, 1997

Commercial Space Launch Bulletin

If you're looking for updated information about recent and planned commercial space launches, turn to this site at the U.S. Department of Transportation. This site has reports on recent launches and updates on planned launches as well as a manifest of American commercial launches planned for the next year. There's also specific information about commercial launch sites from Vandenberg to Cape Canaveral.

http://ast.dot.gov/bulletin/