When people talk about the space race of the late 1950s and 1960s, most people assume that this refers to Americans and Soviets both seeking to explore the Moon. Surprisingly, space missions to Mars have been attempted since 1960, although there were many failures before the success of the American satellite Mariner 4 in 1964. It also may be surprising to hear that the first six missions weren’t even affiliated with the U.S.—instead they were Soviet spacecraft. Despite the advancement in technology and goals of missions to Mars over the last 50 years or so, there still has yet to be a manned mission to the red planet.
In October of 1960, the Soviets began the Marsnik program with the goal of having a spacecraft study the space between Earth and Mars, study Mars itself and return images via a flyby. Unfortunately, both the Marsnik 1 and Marsnik 2 failed to make it to Earth’s orbit. The Soviets didn’t have much more success with missions to Mars later in 1962 or 1964 with the beginning of the Zond program. Despite the lack of successful missions, the USSR wasn’t deterred and actually, before any success with flyby missions to Mars, they attempted to land a spaceship on Mars in late 1962-early 1963. The Sputnik 24 only made it to Earth’s orbit and then broke apart as it attempted to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. Overall, it is important to note that there is slight uncertainty with the information about the former Soviet spacecraft because of course, this was the space race during the Cold War and some information from that time period can be nebulous.
The US involvement with Mars began with the very successful Mariner program that spawned a total of six missions to Mars yielding the first successful flyby of Mars and the first successful orbit of the nearby planet. Between 1962 and 1973, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory built 10 Mariner spacecraft to explore the inner solar system. The first two launches in the program related to Mars were two identical spacecraft, Mariner 3 and Mariner 4, that were designed to be the first satellites to fly by Mars and take pictures of its surface. Mariner 3 failed in its mission to get to Mars, but Mariner 4 was successful in being the first object to complete a flyby of Mars and collect close-up photographs of Mars. This is pretty remarkable considering that we wouldn’t even land on the moon for four more years. Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 were launched in February and March of 1969. They were able to analyze the atmosphere and surface of Mars using sensors and relayed hundreds of pictures back to Earth. These missions were also important in debunking the myth that Mars contained canals as was believed for much of the 1800s. The final two missions to Mars in the Mariner program were launched in May 1971 and while Mariner 8 failed to launch, Mariner 9 succeeded in functioning in Mars’ orbit for nearly a year. The latter spacecraft completely revised the perception of Mars by revealing enormous volcanoes, canyons and evidence of ancient riverbeds. It was able to photomap 100% of the planet’s surface and achieve the first close-up pictures of Mars’ two moons—Phobos and Deimos. The timing of these accomplishments was impeccable, because not even a month later, the Soviet Mars program achieved a successful orbit of Mars.
The Soviet Mars and Phobos programs were marked with mostly failure, but achieved a lot of success especially with the Mars 3 mission. After the failure of the first two Mars missions, Mars 3 was successful in being the first Soviet craft to gather data in Mars’ orbit and the first mission to successfully land on the Martian surface. The orbiter sent back about eight months of data from December 1971 to August 1972 about things ranging from the topography of the surface to Mars’ gravity. The lander was not so successful and only transmitted about 15-20 seconds of data. The Mars program did have four more missions (Mars 4-7), but these had very minor impact in advancing our knowledge about the red planet. The following Phobos program produced two missions toward the end of the USSR in 1988. They were intended to observe Mars as well as its moon Phobos, but were mostly unsuccessful missions.
On the American side, the Viking program produced arguably the greatest success of any missions to Mars to date. The two missions had vehicles that were composed of two main parts, an orbiter and a lander. They were launched successively in August and September of 1975 and arriving at Mars in June and August of the following year. In addition to performing their own scientific experiments, the orbiters helped to communicate with the landers and locate good landing sites. One of the main scientific objectives of the missions was to perform biological experiments to see if any signs of life existed in the soil of Mars. Although there is still some ongoing debate, the general agreement is that the results showed no evidence of microbial life on Mars.
In the post-Cold War era, the push for missions to Mars has remained strong with the U.S. leading the way. Although other nations like the U.K., Japan and Russia have attempted missions, the only real success came with the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Pathfinder. The Mars Global Surveyor marked the U.S. return to Mars after a long absence and was launched in November 1996. Among other things, probably the mission’s greatest contribution was photos of craters that appear to the presence of water at some point on Mars. The Mars Pathfinder was launched in December 1996 and was intended to analyze the environment of Mars. It was significant in being the first of a number of missions to Mars that included rovers that could better analyze the surface of Mars. Another important aspect of this mission was to prove that NASA could engage in low-cost practices. Although NASA at times has had struggles with its budget, it has produced a number of successful missions with more missions set to launch in the near future. Today, the U.S. has many ongoing missions to Mars including the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that have far surpassed expectations.
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