Overview

Historian William Sheehan and astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell combine their talents to tell a unique story of what we've learned by studying Mars through evolving technologies. What the eye sees as a mysterious red dot wandering through the sky becomes a blurry mirage of apparent seas, continents, and canals as viewed through Earth-based telescopes. Beginning with the Mariner and Viking missions of the 1960s and 1970s, space-based instruments and monitoring systems have flooded scientists with data on Mars's meteorology and geology, and have even sought evidence of possible existence of life-forms on or beneath the surface. This knowledge has transformed our perception of the Red Planet and has provided clues for better understanding our own blue world. Discovering Mars vividly conveys the way our understanding of this other planet has grown from earliest times to the present. The narrative of our quest for the Red Planet has showcased some of our species' most hopeful attributes: curiosity, cooperation, exploration, and the restless drive to understand our place in the larger universe. Sheehan and Bell have written an ambitious first draft of that narrative even as the latest chapters continue to be added both by researchers on Earth and our robotic emissaries on and around Mars.

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Jim Bell is a professor of astronomy and planetary science in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the geology and composition of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, and he has authored seven popular science books. William Sheehan retired from psychiatry in 2018 after a professional career spanning three decades. He is a leading historian of astronomy, with twenty books to his name. Christopher Douyard took the backroads to audiobook narration, though he is no stranger to performing. Christopher has nourished a passion for books and storytelling since his youth, when he would devour Tolkien and volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica with equal abandon. Christopher records in his studio, nestled amongst the oak trees in a quiet, central Connecticut town.

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