Among humanity’s greatest milestones in its quest to travel through space is the exploration of Mars . We haven’t yet sent humans to the Red Planet—human beings are expected to set foot on its surface in a couple of decades at most—but many probes and rover robots have managed to land on this planet (or land on the planet). , as some prefer to define it).
The space race, whether competitive as in the time of the United States vs. the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War, or a more collaborative one such as the current one led by NASA and the European Space Agency, has always had the Moon as a priority, due to its proximity and relative “ease of arrival” compared to the Red Planet.
The Demon of Mars
Getting to Mars is much more complex, especially because of the so-called ” seven minutes of terror “, the period of entry and descent into the Martian atmosphere in which temperature and risk are maximum.
Mars exploration vehicle
Although Mars is Earth’s closest planetary neighbor 18% of the time, it is a difficult place to visit. There have been almost forty attempts to send missions to Mars, of which more than half of the Martian missions have failed . In fact, some scientists even speak of the “Demon of Mars”, an imaginary force that sabotages ships traveling to the Red Planet.
First successful mission
The first successful mission to Mars, Mariner 4 , was launched by NASA on November 28, 1964 and passed by Mars on July 14, 1965. It passed within 9,849 kilometers of Mars and returned 22 photos, as planned, revealing places with impacts similar to those of the Moon.
seaman 4
Mariner 4 was the fourth in a series of spacecraft used for planetary exploration in flyby mode, and represented the first successful flyby of the planet Mars . It was designed to carry out detailed scientific observations of Mars and transmit these observations to Earth.
Other mission objectives were to perform field and particle measurements in interplanetary space in the vicinity of Mars and to provide expertise and insight into engineering capabilities for long-duration interplanetary flights.
First spacecraft to orbit another planet
The first satelization of a probe on Mars dates back to November 13, 1971. Mariner 9 was launched on May 30 of that same year and had the honor of ending up becoming the first spacecraft to successfully orbit another planet.
Image of Mars sent by Mariner 9
The Mariner 9 mission was a resounding success as it produced the first global map of Mars, including the first detailed views of the volcanoes, Valle Marineris, the polar ice caps, and the Phobos and Deimos satellites.
First object on the surface of Mars
The Soviet Mars 2 probe reached the Martian surface on November 27, 1971. Despite having the achievement of being the first human-made object to reach the surface of the Red Planet, the mission was a failure and it crashed on it.
Mars 2 entered the atmosphere at a steeper angle than expected, despite trajectory corrections being made on June 17 and November 20 of the same year.
Sirenum Fossae, Mars
At a speed of 6 kilometers per second, the descent sequence was altered, causing a failure that caused the parachutes not to deploy, so the lander crashed into the Martian soil at 4º North and 47º West, in the area western Hellas Planitia.
Its sister ship, Mars 3, also entered Mars orbit and managed to release a lander that worked for 20 seconds. Experts suspect that it was destroyed by a dust storm, but the first transmission from its surface was on December 2, 1971.
First detailed images of the surface
The missions that popularized the exploration of Mars were undoubtedly the twin Viking spacecraft , in the mid-1970s (Viking 1 landed on July 20, 1976 and Viking 2 on September 3, 1976), consisting of an orbital vehicle and a module landing.
Viking
These latest rovers obtained the first detailed images of the Martian surface, mapping 97% of the Red Planet and showing a desert landscape resembling Earth’s tundra at least in temperature.