Mars

Perseverance has been on Mars since February 2021 and is still finding stuff. The Sample Return mission to bring its cached samples home is the next big NASA project. If you want to actually engage with Mars beyond the news cycle, here's how.

The books worth reading

Andrew Mishkin's Sojourner: An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission is the best engineering-focused Mars book in print. Around $20 used. It covers Pathfinder (1997) but the engineering challenges he describes are the same ones every subsequent rover has solved differently.

For the wider Mars story, Rod Pyle's Mars: Making Contact is the most current and accessible primer — about $20 and covers Curiosity, InSight, and Perseverance.

For the Sample Return mission specifically, NASA's mission documents are the best source. The agency publishes mission concept reviews online for free.

The fiction

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is the definitive science fiction on the subject. Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars — about $40 for the set. Long, dense, brilliant. It's the trilogy that shaped how most working planetary scientists think about Mars colonisation.

Andy Weir's The Martian is the lighter answer. Worth reading even if you've seen the film — Watney's voice is funnier on the page.

Looking at Mars yourself

Mars is visible to the naked eye for most of its synodic period. A modest telescope shows you the polar caps and some surface features when Mars is at opposition (every 26 months).

For a first telescope, the Celestron NexStar 5SE at around $900 is the entry point most amateur astronomers end up at. The computerised mount makes a difference — finding Mars manually is harder than it sounds and the GoTo function actually works.

If $900 is too much, the Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ at $250 is the legitimate cheaper option. It'll show you Mars as a small disc — not the rover-camera detail but enough to feel real.

For a star chart and planning, the Norton's Star Atlas at $30 is the standard. The Stellarium app is the free digital equivalent and is genuinely excellent.

The monitor and the satellite data

NASA publishes the Perseverance raw images publicly within days of each transmission. If you want to actually look at them, a half-decent monitor matters. A 27-inch 4K monitor in the $300-400 range turns a noise-grade Mars image into something readable.

The HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter produces images so detailed you can see the rover tracks. Browse them at the HiRISE site. Free.

Setup for amateur astronomy generally

A red-LED headlamp at $25 preserves your night vision. A folding observation chair at $80 is the underrated piece of gear — looking through an eyepiece for an hour standing up is miserable.

What not to do

Don't buy the $2,000 beginner telescope with the goofy electronics package. Most of them are bad. The Celestron NexStar 5SE has been the right beginner-to-intermediate scope for 15 years for a reason.

Read the trilogy. Buy the 5SE. Look up next opposition (October 2026). Mars rewards the slow approach.