Posted by tourdemars to Terraforming at August 23, 2003 12:00 PM

Mars is sneaking up on us this week. On 27 August the red planet will be less than 56 million kilometres from Earth, the closest it's been for 60,000 years. Stargazers on the ground will be able to marvel at the bronze orb in the southeastern skies. Scientists are more blasé about the record-breaking encounter, but have capitalized on it to dispatch a fleet of visiting spacecraft.