It's dated very badly, as Clarke's expectations of what space exploration and Mars colonization would be, are completely different from what the current world looks like. And the Martian geo-biology also is very much off the mark.

Apart from that, the story is simple and superfluous, with nothing much going on. I can imagine, back in the 50s, some of it might have been fantastic futuristic writing, but now it just feels quaint.