Little chopper’s historic flight

If all goes well a little helicopter will be motoring around on Mars today, giving us a whole new perspective on the red planet.

The helicopter and the rocket that carried it landed on February 18. Scientists were not surprised but it was news to me that the place actually has an atmosphere, nothing that we could breath but it has one. And the atmosphere is what will allow the little chopper to motor around.

There is apparently a pretty good likelihood that there has been life on our neighboring planet, and hopefully the flying gizmo will find evidence of that. (The way Mars and Venus move around, sometimes one is closer to Earth and sometimes the other, so sometimes one is our nearest neighbor and sometimes the other.) The upcoming travels of the Mars helicopter promise to be very interesting.

I’m getting a little long in the tooth for space travel — among other things — but for young people and future generations that might actually get to copter around places like Mars, the decades and centuries ahead could be a very exciting time.

Actually the future has always been an exciting time for me, as it is for most people. When my wife and I drove to Alaska in 1967 we were as excited as two people could be. I had a job waiting as a reporter for The Anchorage Times and my wife would later become the women’s editor.

While we were motoring up the unpaved Alaska Highway, Richfield Oil was then drilling a wildcat well that would become the discovery well for Prudhoe Bay. The years after the discovery were a great time to be in Alaska. Since the discovery was on land Alaska had selected as part of its federal allotment, our young state was suddenly rich. After many decades of lean years, it was an incredible time for Alaska and its people.

Nobody knows what the world’s future adventures in space will bring but if, as the saying goes, the past is prologue for the future, some exciting years lie ahead.

Let us hope that the little chopper will lift successfully off the Martian surface and motor around at least a few miles near the landing site. And let’s be clear that if the bird does find signs of past life on the red planet, it’s unlikely to be the kind that wears sunglasses and carries credit cards.

Actually it’s difficult to imagine what kind of life might have existed in a place like Mars. Presumably it would be more bacterial or primitive vegetative life. It could be a pleasant surprise (though perhaps not) if more developed forms of life were to be found.

There is always the chance that the news from that distant place will be bad and that it will tell us things we would rather not know about the likely future of Planet Earth. Let’s hope not but when you start exploring the universe, you need to be prepared to find or learn anything.

The universe is a vast place and it is perhaps unlikely that humans will prove to be the most highly developed forms of life in it. We may never know but it is exciting to think that our exploration of Mars might answer some of our many questions. Other sentient beings could be waiting on a distant planet and hoping we never find them.

Perhaps our little helicopter will be able to find a form of wood and then knock on it.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.