The Journey to Mars

The possibility of life beyond earth is what prompted the world's leading nations to begin running missions to Mars in the 1960’s. Mars is the fourth rock from the sun, just after Earth, and scientists of today have now determined that branching streams, river valleys, deltas, and basins used to be present on Mars’ surface. Between 1960 and 1980, US and Soviet Space programs began to focus their efforts on exploring this mysterious planet. 

Early Missions

Nasa was the first space program to conduct a fly-by of Mars, with spacecraft Mariner 4, in 1965. Mariner 4 also took the first ever close up pictures of Mars. NASA completed two more successful flybys in 1969, with spacecraft Mariner 6 and 7. 

In 1971, the Soviet Union landed the first instrumental capsule on Mars, Mars 3. Sending a spacecraft to Mars is hard, and landing it is even harder. More than 60% of landing attempts have failed, which is due to the thin Martian atmosphere creating a challenging descent for spacecraft. 

Only four space agencies have put spacecraft into Martian orbit: 

• NASA

• Russia’s Roscosmos

• the European Space Agency (ESA)

• The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). 

The United States is the only country to have ever operated a spacecraft on the planet’s surface.

Further Achievements in Space Exploration

In November 1971, NASA launched the first ever spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mariner 9. The photos that Mariner 9 took covered 80 percent of Mars’ surface, and illustrated how Mars experienced widespread volcanism, ancient erosion by water, and the reshaping of extensive areas of surface by internal forces. 

In 1976, NASA launched the first spacecraft to ever operate on Mars, Viking 1 and 2. The purpose of these missions was to discover signs of extraterrestrial life. 

In 1996, NASA put the first ever roaming rover on Mars, Sojourner. Sojourner’s successors, Spirit and Opportunity, were very successful. They explored the planet for longer than expected, and have become famous for photos they took displaying evidence of past water.

Missions of Today

In 2021, the United States, United Arab Emirates, and China, all launched missions to Mars. The United Arab Emirates sent the orbiter “Hope,” which carried a camera and infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers to study the Martian atmosphere. 

China launched mission Tianwen-1, which landed on Mars on May 14, and consisted of an orbiter and a small rover, “Zhurong”. The American mission, launched in 2020 ,carried the Perseverance rover and a drill to collect samples of Mars’ core. It also carried a small helicopter, Ingenuity, which is the first machine to fly on another planet.

Missions to Mars have represented significant achievements in the history of space exploration. Their findings and discoveries have been crucial to our understanding of the possibility of life beyond Earth, and the future of space exploration is one that we can’t wait for.