What was the first probe to land on mars

Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult, not least because engineers back on Earth have no control over it in real time, and must leave pre-programmed instructions to play out.

Many missions have been lost, or have crashed on arrival. Utopia Planitia, where Zhurong now sits, is a wide, flat expanse in a vast, feature-less basin that formed when a smaller object smashed into Mars billions of years ago.

The low altitude, clear terrain and potential for finding ice in the subsurface also means that future missions might be able to collect samples there, and that the region could make a good landing site for crewed missions, he says. Two cameras are fitted on a mast to take images of nearby rocks while the rover is stationary; these will be used to plan the journeys that it takes. A multispectral camera placed between these two navigation imagers will reveal the minerals present in these rocks.

Like Perseverance, Zhurong has ground-penetrating radar. As it winds its way across the basin, this will reveal the geological processes that led to the formation of the regions through which the rover travels. With luck, Zhurong might detect the thin horizon that marks any permafrost, says Orosei. Knowing how deep this lies, and its general characteristics, could offer insights into more recent climate changes on Mars, and reveal the fate of ancient water that could have once soaked the surface, he says.

It will also be the first rover equipped with a magnetometer to measure the magnetic field in its vicinity. When the debris settled to the surface, scientists discovered those unusual features were the tops of dormant volcanoes. Mariner 9 also discovered a huge rift across the surface of Mars, later called Valles Marineris — after the spacecraft that discovered it.

Mariner 9 spent nearly a year orbiting the Red Planet, and returned 7, photos. As the Soviet Union continued its Mars series of spacecraft, it garnered partial success; out of four spacecraft aimed for the Red Planet, only one orbiter and one lander briefly returned data in Viking 1 and Viking 2 both arrived at the Red Planet in , and sent their lander to the surface while the orbiter remained working above.

The Viking program represented the first extended exploration of Mars, as each spacecraft lasted years and transmitted reams of information back to Earth. Hopes of finding life on the Red Planet, however, were dashed when the probes could not definitively prove the existence of microbes on the surface. The results remain controversial , as more is understood about microbial activity.

The Viking missions also revealed that the composition of Mars was almost identical to certain meteorites found on Earth. This suggested that some meteorites found on Earth were originally from Mars. The Soviet Union also made two attempts to reach one of the moons of Mars, Phobos, in the s, but both missions failed. The spacecraft was lost just before it was supposed to achieve Mars orbit on Aug. While the loss of communication was never fully explained, the most likely cause was a fuel tank rupture that caused the spacecraft to spin and lose contact with Earth.

The exorbitant cost and the spacecraft's failure sparked a new move within NASA to create better, faster and cheaper missions that would take advantage of advanced computer electronics and new team management techniques. Its mission was extended several times until NASA lost contact with it in MGS mapped the Red Planet from pole to pole, revealing many ancient signs of water, such as gullies and hematite a mineral that forms in water.

MGS also took pictures of public interest, including re-imaging the famous " face on Mars. In , the USSR was dismantled. The Russian space agency continued the Soviet quest for Mars with their Mars 96 mission, which launched on Nov. However, the orbiter, two landers and two penetrators were lost after the rocket failed. On the other side of Earth, the FBC program's first mission was a great success.

The lander was the first to use a set of airbags to cushion the landing, and Sojourner was the first rover to trundle around on Mars. Pathfinder was expected to last a month and Sojourner a week, but both remained in operation until September , when contact was lost with Pathfinder. The probe launched in and landed successfully on Dec. On Christmas Day , the British-built Beagle 2 lander plummeted through the Martian atmosphere with the hopes of Europe on its tail, only to vanish without a trace.

British and Russian researchers weren't the only ones to send space probes to Mars only to have them fail at the end. The massive 1,lb kilogram lander dropped from an orbiting mothership to make a three-point landing using a parachute and rocket engine. Viking 1's three biology experiments found no clear evidence of Mars microbes. The lander was powered by a plutonium decay-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator and went silent on Nov.

The sister ship to Viking 1, Viking 2 touched down on the broad, flat plains of Utopia Planitia, where it snapped photos of morning frost and — like its predecessor — found sterile soil that held no clear evidence of microbial life. The lander shut down in Independence Day in style by landing the first mobile probe on the Red Planet. The Mars Pathfinder Lander used a parachute and airbags to land on Mars and then deployed Sojourner — a small, six-wheeled rover the size of a microwave oven that explored nearby terrain.

Mars Science Laboratory. Skip to main content. About JPL. Engage With JPL. Viking 1 Viking 1 The first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, Viking 1 was part of a two-part mission to investigate the Red Planet and search for signs of life.