From Mars with Love: Postcards from 50 Years of Exploring The Red Planet - Chris Lintott

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Jan 5, 2026

Dive into fifty years of Mars exploration! Discover how Viking's findings transformed our view of the red planet from a hostile desert to a once-water-rich world. Explore the thrilling successes of rovers Spirit and Opportunity, revealing evidence of ancient water. Learn about the intriguing discoveries from the Phoenix mission and the ongoing mystery of methane with the Trace Gas Orbiter. As we look ahead, Chris Lintott discusses the challenges of sample return and the future of Martian research.

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INSIGHT

Limits Of Local Sampling

Mars missions sample tiny, localized views and we must avoid overgeneralizing from limited landings.
Chris Lintott warns reconstructing Mars' global history from sparse sites is extremely challenging.

ANECDOTE

Viking's Mixed Findings

Viking orbiters revealed river valleys and seasonal CO2 cycling on Mars and found pervasive dust.
Viking landers ran biology experiments that produced confusing, non-conclusive results about life.

ANECDOTE

Phoenix Found Ice And Perchlorate

Phoenix landed in the Martian Arctic and directly confirmed water ice beneath the surface.
It also discovered perchlorate in the soil and recorded dry-ice snowfall before losing power.

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During the fifty years since the launch of the Viking spacecraft to Mars, our view of the red planet has changed from hostile desert to a world which was once covered in water, and which may just possibly sustain life. Lavishly illustrated with the latest images from the fleet of spacecraft that have explored our neighbour, this lecture considers how Mars’ fate, like that of Earth, was set in the Solar System’s first billion years, and the chaotic environment the process of planet formation produced.

This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 3rd of December 2025 at Conway Hall, London

Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.

Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’.

Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/mars-love

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