May 25, 2025 and seventeen years ago on this day in 2008, the United States’ Phoenix Lander, successfully landed in the Green Valley of the Vastitas Borealis on Mars.
The Lander carried the equipment for several scientific experiments, but also a special DVD compiled by The Planetary Society. The disc contains “Visions of Mars,= a multimedia collection of literature and art about the Red Planet. Works include the text of H. G. Wells’ 1897 novel “War of the Worlds,” and the1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles, Percival Lowell’s 1908 bool, “Mars as the Abode of Life,” all eleven Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles,” and Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Green Mars.”
A number of my short stories are contained on similar archival disks on the moon.
The 100-word drabble for today is actually 111 words long, but I didn’t want to edit it. It’s the complete message on the disk.
This archive, provided to the NASA Phoenix mission by The Planetary Society, contains literature and art (Visions of Mars), greetings from Mars visionaries of our day, and names of 21st century Earthlings who wanted to send their names to Mars. This DVD-ROM is designed to be read on personal computers in 2007. Information is stored in a spiral groove on the disc. A laser beam can scan the groove when metallized or a microscope can be used. Very small bumps and holes represent the zeroes and ones of digital information. The groove is about 0.74 micrometres wide. For more information refer to the standards document ECMA-268 (80 mm DVD Read-Only Disk)
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