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American astronomer Percival Lowell stimulated interest in Mars. Through his telescope at the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, Lowell in the 1890s believed he saw a network of canals. Intelligent beings must have built them, he reasoned, evidencing that Mars once harbored life and, perhaps, still did. During the space race between the United States and the U.S.S.R., both nations sought to expand their knowledge of Mars....
