What was the first spacecraft to land on Mars?
82968#0
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with "Viking 2") sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. On July 20, 1976, it became the second spacecraft to soft-land on Mars, and the first soft lander to successfully perform its mission. (The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars was the Soviet Union's Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, which stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds.) "Viking 1" held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of days (over 6¼ years) or Martian solar days, until that record was broken by "Opportunity" on May 19, 2010.
Viking 1
426143#33
The Viking program launched "Viking 1" and "Viking 2" spacecraft to Mars in 1975; The program consisted of two orbiters and two landers – these were the first two spacecraft to successfully land and operate on Mars.
The primary scientific objectives of the lander mission were to search for biosignatures and observe meteorologic, seismic and magnetic properties of Mars. The results of the biological experiments on board the Viking landers remain inconclusive, with a reanalysis of the Viking data published in 2012 suggesting signs of microbial life on Mars.
The Viking orbiters revealed that large floods of water carved deep valleys, eroded grooves into bedrock, and traveled thousands of kilometers. Areas of branched streams, in the southern hemisphere, suggest that rain once fell.
Exploration of Mars
6006834#1
The cover of the album features an image by Viking 1, the first spacecraft to land on Mars; the album's liner notes include additional imagery of the planet's landscape as taken by the spacecraft on July 20, 1976. The text on the cover was done by fantastic artist Roger Dean, best known for his work on album covers for bands such as Yes. The album's title comes from the tour in the film "Total Recall".
Blue Sky on Mars
426143#28
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 1971C), 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.
Exploration of Mars
426143#34
Mars Pathfinder was a U.S. spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars on July 4, 1997. It consisted of a lander and a small wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner, which was the first rover to operate on the surface of Mars. In addition to scientific objectives, the Mars Pathfinder mission was also a "proof-of-concept" for various technologies, such as an airbag landing system and automated obstacle avoidance, both later exploited by the Mars Exploration Rovers.
Exploration of Mars
11589575#15
NASA's "Mars Pathfinder" spacecraft, launched one month after Global Surveyor, landed on July 4, 1997. Its landing site was an ancient flood plain in Mars' northern hemisphere called Ares Vallis, which is among the rockiest parts of Mars. It carried a tiny remote-controlled rover called Sojourner, which was the first acting Mars rover that traveled a few meters around the landing site, exploring the conditions and sampling rocks around it. Newspapers around the world carried images of the lander dispatching the rover to explore the surface of Mars in a way never achieved before.
Mars landing
36298144#5
The mission was projected to cost $350 million USD and to meet a cost cap of no more than $425 million USD, not including the launch cost. It must have a March 1, 2016 launch date requirement (or no later than December 31, 2016) to land during the Mars southern summer. In order to reduce the cost and minimize risk, the spacecraft concept is based on a previous spacecraft design, the Mars Phoenix lander, which has a demonstrated flight heritage that incorporates soft landing capability and incorporates a restartable rocket propulsion system, suitable to be repurposed for this mission requirements. The spacecraft would land at a target landing area near the south pole of Mars, where geysers exist over a stretch of several hundred kilometers with densities of at least one geyser every and have the ability to "hop" at least twice from its landed location after a summertime landing to reposition itself close to a geyser site, and wait through the winter until the first sunlight of spring to witness first-hand the Martian geyser phenomenon and investigate the debris pattern and channel.
Mars Geyser Hopper
458206#3
After the cancellation of the mission, the Mars Surveyor 2001 spacecraft was put in storage. Lockheed Martin, which built the lander, had kept the nearly complete lander in an environmentally controlled clean room from 2001. The spacecraft was offered as government furnished property to investigators proposing missions to the Mars Scout Program, and the spacecraft was used as the lander on the "Phoenix" mission; it is currently on Mars in the north polar region. In addition to using the 2001 Surveyor Lander, three of the experiments flown on the "Phoenix" mission are instruments that were originally built for the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander:Note a MARDI camera was eventually used during the Curiosity rover landing, and returned landing images to Earth, also it was used on the surface of Mars
Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander
101448#0
Mars 3 was an unmanned space probe of the Soviet Mars program which spanned the years between 1960 and 1973. Mars 3 was launched May 28, 1971, nine days after its twin spacecraft Mars 2. The probes were identical robotic spacecraft launched by Proton-K rockets with a Blok D upper stage, each consisting of an orbiter and an attached lander. After the Mars 2 lander crashed on the martian surface, Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to attain soft landing on Mars on 2 December 1971. It failed shortly after landing.The type of Orbiter was the Variant M-71 of the Bus/Obiter 4M-V. The primary purpose of the orbiter was to study the topography of the surface; analyze its soil composition; measure various properties of the atmosphere; monitor "solar radiation, the solar wind, and the interplanetary and martian magnetic fields". In addition, it served as a "communications relay to send signals from the lander to Earth".
Mars 3
25391#113
In 1957 the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, "Sputnik 1", was launched; in 1961 the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yuri Gagarin. Many other Soviet and Russian space exploration records ensued, including the first spacewalk performed by Alexey Leonov, Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to land on the Moon, Venera 7 was the first to land on another planet (Venus), Mars 3 then the first to land on Mars, the first space exploration rover "Lunokhod 1", and the first space station "Salyut 1" and "Mir".
Russia
426143#6
The first to contact the surface were two Soviet probes: Mars 2 lander on November 27 and Mars 3 lander on December 2, 1971Mars 2 failed during descent and Mars 3 about twenty seconds after the first Martian soft landing. Mars 6 failed during descent but did return some corrupted atmospheric data in 1974.
Exploration of Mars