Mars Up Close: From First Orbit to First Flight

Launched on May 28, 1971, Mars 3 combined an orbiter with a descent lander. Its lander made the first successful soft landing on Mars on December 2, 1971, though contact was lost after a brief time, possibly because of a severe dust storm.

Mariner 9 launched on May 30, 1971 and became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, arriving in November amid a global dust storm. Once the dust cleared it mapped the surface for nearly a year, revealing Olympus Mons and the Valles Marineris canyon system, and helped select landing sites for Viking.

Launched on September 9, 1975, Viking 2 paired an orbiter with a lander nearly identical to Viking 1. The orbiter returned about 16,000 images from 706 orbits, and the lander worked on the surface for 1,316 days, or 1,281 sols, before its batteries failed in 1980.

Launched on November 7, 1996, Mars Global Surveyor orbited Mars from 1997 to 2006 as a global mapping mission, examining the planet from its ionosphere to the surface. It also monitored the atmosphere for other orbiters during aerobraking and helped identify candidate landing sites for later rovers and landers.

Launched on December 4, 1996, Mars Pathfinder landed a base station and a rover on Mars in 1997 as part of NASA's Discovery Program. The lander was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station after touchdown, and it carried a 10.6-kilogram rover named Sojourner.

Sojourner reached Mars on July 4, 1997 and worked there for 92 sols, or 95 Earth days. It was the first wheeled vehicle to operate on an astronomical object other than the Earth or Moon, landing in Ares Vallis in the Chryse Planitia region.

Launched on April 7, 2001, 2001 Mars Odyssey uses spectrometers and a thermal imager to look for evidence of past or present water and ice, and to study the planet's geology and radiation environment. It also relays communications for Mars rovers, and it was still collecting data as of April 2026.

Spirit launched on June 10, 2003 and landed in Gusev crater on January 4, 2004. It was operational for 2,208 sols, over twenty times longer than NASA planners expected, before its mission was declared complete.

Opportunity launched on July 7, 2003 and landed in Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin Spirit touched down on the other side of the planet. It was operational for 5,111 sols, or 14 years and 138 Earth days, until its mission was declared complete in 2018.

Launched from Cape Canaveral on August 12, 2005, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars on March 10, 2006. After six months of aerobraking it entered its final science orbit in November 2006, where it searches for evidence of water and relays communications for other missions.

Ingenuity launched with the Mars 2020 mission on July 30, 2020. On April 19, 2021 it made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, and it completed 72 flights before rotor blade damage grounded it permanently on January 18, 2024.