Exploration of Mars Timeline
Between 1960 and 1969, the Soviet Union launched nine probes intended to reach Mars. They all failed: three at launch; three failed to reach near-Earth orbit; one during the burn to put the spacecraft into trans-Mars trajectory; and two during the interplanetary orbit.
The Mars 1M programs was the first Soviet unmanned spacecraft interplanetary exploration program, which consisted of two flyby probes launched towards Mars in October 1960, Mars 1960 A and Mars 1960 B. After launch, the third stage pumps on both launchers were unable to develop enough pressure to commence ignition, so Earth parking orbit was not achieved. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 120 km before re-entry.
The Mariner 4 mission in 1964 was the first successful mission to mars. It was a flyby mission by NASA.
1960s
1970s
The USSR intended to have the first artificial satellite of Mars beating the planned American Mariner 8 and Mariner 9 Mars orbiters. In May 1971, one day after Mariner 8 malfunctioned at launch and failed to reach orbit, Cosmos 419 (Mars 1971 C), a heavy probe of the Soviet Mars program M-71, also failed to launch. This spacecraft was designed as an orbiter only, while the next two probes of project M-71, Mars 2 and Mars 3, were multipurpose combinations of an orbiter and a lander with small skis-walking rovers that would be the first planet rovers outside the Moon.They were successfully launched in mid-May 1971 and reached Mars about seven months later.
On November 27, 1971 the lander of Mars 2 crash-landed due to an on-board computer malfunction and became the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars. On 2 December 1971, the Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing, but its transmission was interrupted after 14.5 seconds.
1980s-90s
In the 80s only two missions happened. The Fobos 1 and the Fobos 2, both failed. One of the most memorable space mission that happened in the 90s was the first flight of the international space stations. This was the product of a partnership between NASA, Russia, Canada, Japan and European countries.
2000s-Now-Future
A lot of rovers have been sent to Mars. For example Curiosity. He was sent on mars in 2012. He was named by Clara Ma, at sixth grade she wrote an essay and won the rover naming contest. She named it Curiosity because she believes that humans are going to Mars because we are curios.
There are also a lot of future projects to look forward to. China is building it's own space station, which is expected to be launched on 2020. The U.A.E are looking forward to send an orbiter to Mars in 2020. And maybe, in 2020 NASA would send another rover on Mars. So in the next decade we are gonna see a lot of progress!
