Sir, The article, "Three exploratory missions scheduled for this year" (August 8th), is remarkable for its factual errors.
"Canals" as described last century were not "of natural origin", as stated they were optical illusions. Life appeared on Earth and water flowed on Mars not "three million years ago", but closer to three thousand million years ago The Mars Observer failure was not "unexplained" to the inquiry, board. Mars circles the Sun at about 140 million miles distance as stated, and Earth at about 95 million how Mars could then ever be "35 million miles from Earth" as stated escapes me. Since both are moving in orbit, the distance varies greatly anyway. Mars is not, the fourth largest planet it is fourth out from the Sun, but the seventh largest. Mars is not half the "size" of Earth, it's half the width which makes it about an eight the volume of Earth which makes "its mass is a tenth of Earth's" more understandable. There were more problems, but that's enough to go on.
Surely you can at least catch arithmetic nonsense, if not simple errors of fact that could be checked in five minutes with a reasonable almanac. Please do pot sink "to the illiteracy level of the common American newspaper. Yours, etc Peoria, Illinois, USA.