REAL LIFE NEWS: ALL THE MARS MISSIONS, EVER
by Hazed
As mentioned in the previous story, missions to Mars – both orbiters and landers – are almost ten a penny these days. But getting there in the first place was a very difficult step, with many failures and false starts along the way.
In the race between the USSR and the US to be the first to achieve space goals, the Soviets were the first to try to reach Mars, launching six attempts to fly past the planet between 1960 and 1964. All were unsuccessful, and in 1965 they were pipped to the post by the US Mariner 4 which successfully flew past the planet and captured 21 black and white photos.
The source link below lists all of the Mars missions. It’s dominated by the US and USSR, of course, but more recently the European Space Agency entered the game too.
In the future we can expect to see other countries sending their own probes to Mars. India, China and the United Arab Emirates all have plans for missions to Mars in the works, and Japan is working on a mission concept too.
Then of course there’s the possibility of a crewed mission to Mars… but that’s a whole new level of difficulty.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/datablog/2016/jul/23/forty-years-of-missions-to-mars
