Mars has fascinated us for millennia. Almost from the time astronomers first turned their telescopes on the planet shining in the night sky, we ve imagined life there. Unlike our other planetary neighbor, Venus, which remains shrouded in cloudy mystery, the red planet has invited speculation and exploration. Since the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union and, later, Russia and Japan, have launched spacecraft destined to land on or orbit Mars.
The successful missions, like the very first Mars flyby in 1964 by the U.S. Mariner 4, have provided a treasure trove of data and, of course, introduced many new questions. Recently, those data, provided compliments of spacecraft such as the Phoenix Mars Lander, the Curiosity rover, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have been arriving at Earth at a dizzying rate. It seems like a golden age for Mars exploration has arrived.
Imagine, if you will, a huge network of strange, huge “tubes” positioned across certain portions of Mars’ vast landscape. Not only that, they just might have been the sophisticated creations of ancient Martians who used them as a means of perhaps planet-wide transport in the distant past. Sounds incredible? Well, yes, it
is incredible. But does that make it true? That’s the big question that sorely requires answering. The controversy all began after certain photos of the curious structures were secured by NASA’s
Mars Global Surveyor, which was launched in November 1996. The
MGS obtained incredible images from all across the planet. Indeed, as NASA noted: “
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Many CPUs have been used in space craft, space stations and other such probes. Such CPUs must be highly reliable, and very durable. The temperatures in space, even with heaters, can vary widely. The radiation that a system is exposed too can be immense. So when designing one of these systems designers don t always use the latest and greatest microprocessor. They use a chip that has been tried and tested. That they KNOW will work.
A CPU for use in space must first be MIL-STD-883 (usually Class M or S, ground based is B). This means it has met the over 100 tests