A leading historian of astronomy and a leading planetary scientist who works at the forefront of space exploration provide a comprehensive history of the solar system's most alluring planet beyond Earth. William Sheehan and Jim Bell chronicle how ancient watchers of the skies attended to Mars's red color and baffling movements, how three and a half centuries of telescopic observations added vistas and controversies around possible seas and continents and canals, and how the current era of exploration by flyby, orbiter, lander, and rover spacecraft have conjured for us the reality of a world of towering shield volcanoes, vast canyons, ancient dry riverbeds--and even possible evidence of past life. A unique collaboration between two authors on the forefront of Mars explorations, past and future, Discovering Mars provides an ambitious, detailed, and evocative account of humanity's enduring fascination with the Red Planet.

Blast off into outer space and explore the mysteries of the red planet with Discovering Mars. Did you know that Mars is twice the size of Earth’s moon? Or that it is home to the Valles Marineris—the largest canyon in our solar system? Blast off and explore the surface of the fourth planet from the Sun with Discovering Mars. This book is a complete scientific guide to Mars, including information on geography, atmosphere, unique landscape features, and more. Discover Mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos, learn all about unique polar spiders, and investigate past, present, and future life on Mars. Incredible illustrations and NASA imagery of Mars’s surface, craters, and volcanoes bring outer space right to your fingertips and let you explore the red planet like never before. Learn all about past missions to Mars, and take a sneak peek into future projects from NASA and beyond. An avid traveler, Alexandra Lefort has lived in France, Scotland, Switzerland, and the U.S., and has now made her home in Vancouver, B.C. Passionate about exploration, she completed a PhD in planetary sciences at the University of Bern, Switzerland, focusing her academic research on the investigations of Martian water, with a particular interest for the question of habitability and extraterrestrial life. This interest in the origin and development of life also translates into artistic representation of terrestrial lifeforms and environments. A self-taught artist, her favorite media are photography, with a portfolio which includes wildlife portraits, macro photography, landscapes, and traditional drawing and painting, including graphite, pastels, acrylics, and digital art. She has designed several coins for the Royal Canadian Mint and has collaborated with paleoartist Julius Csotonyi on realistic depictions of prehistoric wildlife, including a mural for the 2015-2018 exhibit “Ice Age Bison Discovery: Our Frozen Past and Thawing Future” at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, and collaborative paintings in The paleoart of Julius Csotonyi, Why Did T. rex Have Short Arms?: And Other Questions about Dinosaurs, and Discovering Sharks.