Mars is the Solar system’s fourth planet. There was a common belief that Mars has liquid water before first flyby happened in 1965. But after first flies over Mars, people believed there’s no water. Then in 2005, radar caught water on Mars surface. Lastly The Phoenix lander sampled water on the Mars surface. There are lots of Mars missions since 1969. How many spacecraft landed to Mars?
First Mars missions are started by Soviet Union. They sent two rockets to Mars named Mars 1969A and Mars 1969B. But two of them lost before landing.
Then In 1971, Cosmos 419 was the first spacecraft sit in the orbit of Mars. But it lost in the fourth step of main mission before landing the surface.
Mars 2 and Mars 3 landers landed on Mars and they sent first photos. But two of them disconnected from the live connection and lost after twenty minutes.
First successful land was from NASA’s Viking program. First colored pictures of Mars came from Viking probe. A photo of Viking 1 called “Face on Mars” is discussed for decades but recent spacecraft sent photos from same area didn’t find anything.
Mars Pathfinder is sent to Mars in 1997. It took lots of photos, made scientific investigations and made rock researches.
Last attempts to Mars landing are Russia’s Fobos-Grunt and chinese Yinghuo-1. They tried to land on the Phobos satellite of Mars. In future ESA ExoMars will try to land the surface of Mars with some special abilities.
