On This Day 51 Years Ago – Mariner 4 dismissed the possibility of life on Mars!

On 14 July 1965 Mariner 4 performed the first successful flyby of the planet Mars. It captured the first images of another planet (ie not of Earth a moon) ever taken from deep space.  The pictures of a cratered, seemingly dead world drastically changed the view of the scientific community of the possibility of life on Mars - from possible to improbably if not impossible. Mariner 4 (together with Mariner 3 known as Mariner–Mars 1964) was the fourth in a series of spacecraft designed Read more [...]