On May 19, 1971, Mars 2 was launched, the second of seven unmanned spacecraft dispatched to the planet by the Soviet Union. It became the first manmade object to reach the claret sphere’s surface, and just the latest in a string of stunning space exploration achievements for the USSR.

While a major accomplishment, it wasn't entirely smooth sailing for the maverick craft. The orbiter's primary objectives were to photograph the Martian surface, determine the planet's temperature, study its topography, composition and physical properties, measure the atmosphere's properties, monitor solar wind and magnetic fields, and act as a communications relay to Earth.

​However as bad luck would have it, a particularly violent and voluminous dust storm on Mars deleteriously impacted the mission. The atmosphere was thick with "a planet-wide robe ofinsights on Martian gravity and magnetic fields. Much of the intelligence gleaned still informs understanding of Mars to this day — and the orbiter continues to float in Martian orbit contemporaneously.

The groundbreaking expedition followed not long after the USSR made history by landing the first robotically controlled rover in space — Lunokhod 1 ("moonwalker" in Russian) traveled to the moon November 10, 1970, achieving a soft landing a week later. Measuring over seven feet long, Lunokhod 1 ran on eight wheels and was equipped with four television cameras and an X-ray spectrometer. It roamed for 322 days, analyzing soil samples and transmitting photographs back to Earth.

​It ceased communication September 14, 1971 for reasons unclear, and its precise location was unknown until 2010, when researchers using successfully bounced a