Imagination takes a flight to Mars

— -- This could be the Indian summer of Mars exploration.

The success of NASA's Phoenix lander has capped a decade of robotic derring-do and discoveries by uncovering chips of ice on the barren surface of the Red Planet's north pole. The find proves the existence of water, a key ingredient of life.

"It's such a thrill to find ice under our lander," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, chief scientist of the Phoenix mission, at a news conference in June.

But economic and political uncertainties are casting doubt on the future of such exploration as budgets are cut, priorities are questioned and the unknowns about the next president shadow the horizon.

Democrat Barack Obama has called for debate on NASA's goals, and his opponent, John McCain, who says he supports manned missions to Mars, has called for a freeze on federal spending.

"In the first year of an Obama or McCain administration, there will be some hard decisions to make regarding NASA," says Eligar Sadeh of the Air Force Academy's Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies in Colorado Springs.

In the popular imagination, Mars has been a goal of U.S. space exploration since the days of controversial rocket expert Wernher von Braun, the leader of the team that developed the V-2 ballistic missile for the Nazis during World War II.

After the war, von Braun worked first for the U.S. Army and then for NASA. In 1952, he outlined a Martian expedition in the magazine Collier's. His proposal, to ship 70 astronauts in 10 spaceships on a one-way trip to Mars, eventually reached 42 million U.S. homes in a 1956 series, The Exploration of Mars, broadcast on Walt Disney Presents.

The appeal of Mars

Such grandiose notions died in the 1970s after the Apollo lunar landings revealed the costs and dangers of manned spaceflight. But Mars still commands great interest from the public and scientists alike.

"Mars is the planet, although it's very different, that is most Earth-like in our solar system," says A. Thomas Young, a retired Lockheed Martin manager and vice chair of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board. "Every time we go there, we are pleasantly surprised by the results.

"Phoenix is just the latest example. And Mars is one of those things that has really captured the imagination of the public."

Since July 4, 1997, when the Mars Pathfinder rover riveted the nation with Martian vistas, the space agency has spent about $5 billion on Mars exploration. The goal has always been to look for signs that water either exists or existed, which would indicate the possibility of life, even if it's just microscopic.