The best (and worst) Mars landings of all time (original) (raw)

Take a look at some of the best and worst Red Planet landings of all time. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Reaching Mars is a hard and unforgiving endeavor, with little room for error.

A large proportion of missions launched toward Mars have been lost due to failed components, rocket glitches, or grievous errors that sent probes crashing into the Martian surface or missing the planet altogether.

Landing missions are especially tricky due to the long time delay between Mars and Earth communications, the thin Martian atmosphere, and the fact that spacecraft and their components must survive several months in space before making it to the surface. We have been very lucky with many landing missions, but not all of them made it down successfully.

Here's a look at the best (and worst) Mars landings of all time:

First on Mars

Mars 3 Lander model at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Russia (Image credit: NASA)

Mars 2, a lander built by the former Soviet Union, has the double-edged distinction of being the first human-built object ever to touch down on the Red Planet. Launched in tandem with its sister craft Mars 3 in 1970, the spherical 1-ton Mars 2 lander was about the size of a kitchen stove and designed to parachute to the Martian surface and use rockets for final braking.

Despite surviving the long trip the Mars — a major feat in itself— the probe crashed into the Martian surface somewhere west of the Hellas basin while a major dust storm churned across the planet.

20 seconds, then silence

Mars 3 was more successful than Mars 2. (Image credit: NASA)

Like its sister craft Mars 2, the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 landing mission was a combination of engineering accomplishment and inexplicable failure. The lander appears as the conical top of the Mars 3 orbiter mothership in this image.

The probe launched in 1970 and landed successfully on Dec. 2, 1971, in the Martian uplands of Terra Sirenium after descending through the same dust storm that thwarted its predecessor Mars 2. But 20 seconds after beginning its first photographic scan, Mars 3’s signal went silent for good.

Beagle 2 gets lost

On Christmas Day 2003, the British-built Beagle 2 lander plummeted through the Martian atmosphere with the hopes of Europe on its tail, only to vanish without a trace.

Shaped like an oversized pocket watch, Beagle 2 hitched a ride to the Red Planet aboard Europe’s Mars Express orbiter but crash-landed on the planet rather than bouncing to a stop with airbags. A lower-than-expected atmospheric density may have caused the probe’s parachute and airbags to deploy too late, an investigation later found.

Mars Polar Lander

Graphic illustration showing NASA's Mars Polar Lander on the surface of the Red Planet. (Image credit: NASA)

British and Russian researchers weren't the only ones to send space probes to Mars only to have them fail. NASA’s Mars Polar Lander, launched in January 1999, crashed just before landing near the planet’s south pole in December of that year due to an engineering flaw.

Some of the probe’s leftover tools and equipment were used to build NASA’s new Mars lander, Phoenix, which landed successfully in May 2008.

The Viking success

A model of the Viking 1 lander. (Image credit: NASA)

The first successful landing on Mars came on July 20, 1976, when NASA's Viking 1 lander touched down in Chryse Planitia (The Plains of Golf). The massive 1,270-lb (576-kilogram) lander dropped from an orbiting mothership to make a three-point landing using a parachute and rocket engine.

Viking 1's three biology experiments found no clear evidence of Mars microbes. The lander was powered by a plutonium decay-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator and went silent on Nov. 11, 1982, six years after completing its initial 90-day mission.

Viking's second invasion

Image of the surface of Mars captured by Viking 2. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

Soon after Viking 1's success, NASA landed on Mars again on Sept. 3, 1976 with Viking 2.

The sister ship to Viking 1, Viking 2 touched down on the broad, flat plains of Utopia Planitia, where it snapped photos of morning frost and — like its predecessor — found sterile soil that held no clear evidence of microbial life. The lander shut down in 1980.

Red Planet roving

NASA's Mars Pathfinder Lander deployed Sojourner, a small rover. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

On July 4, 1997, NASA celebrated U.S. Independence Day in style by landing the first mobile probe on the Red Planet.

The Mars Pathfinder Lander used a parachute and airbags to land on Mars and then deployed Sojourner — a small, six-wheeled rover the size of a microwave oven that explored nearby terrain. A total success, the mission ended with a final transmission on Sept. 27, 1997.

Spirit’s big bounce

Graphic illustration showing the landing method of NASA's Spirit Rover which bounced to a stop on the Red Planet. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell)

The success of Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover led to a larger, bolder Mars landing on Jan. 4, 2004, when NASA’s golf cart-sized Spirit rover bounced to a stop inside the broad Gusev Crater.

Spirit spent more than six years — far beyond its initial 90-day mission — exploring Mars before going silent in March 2010.

Opportunity knocks, history answers

Graphic illustration of NASA's robotic explorer Opportunity on the surface of the Red Planet. (Image credit: National Geographic)

The twin of NASA's Spirit rover, the robotic explorer Opportunity, landed on Jan. 25, 2004, and, while it was only expected to last 90 days on the Red Planet's surface, the rover ended up lasting 5,111. The rover stopped communicating with NASA following a global dust storm on Mars, and the mission was declared over in 2019.

Opportunity landed on the flat plains of Meridiani Planum, which sits on the side of Mars opposite the Gusev crater. Amazingly, the rover landed in a small crater, where a nearby outcrop contained evidence that the region was once soaked with water in ages past.

Rising from the ashes

Graphic illustration of NASA's Phoenix lander on the surface of the Red Planet. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

The Phoenix lander touched down on May 25, 2008, and used some spare instruments and equipment salvaged from the lost Mars Polar Lander project.

The solar-powered Phoenix landed near the Martian north pole, where it used a robotic arm-mounted scoop to dig for buried water ice and onboard instruments to determine whether the region may once have been habitable for microbial life. The mission lasted about seven months before the harsh Mars winter ended the lander's activities.

Overcoming 'seven minutes of terror'

Graphic illustration of NASA's Curiosity rover landing on the surface of Mars. (Image credit: NASA)

NASA's flagship Curiosity rover finished a never-before-executed complex landing sequence on Aug. 6, 2012, flawlessly stepping through parachute deployment and a "sky crane" deployment to settle into the surface of Gale Crater.

The mission still remains highly active in late 2024 and has a lot of milestones under its belt. These include finding abundant evidence of water and water-formed rocks, measuring methane at the surface, detecting different types of organics, and continuing to climb a Martian mountain called Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons).

So long, Schiaparelli

The crash site of the Schiaparelli Mars Lander. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

The European Space Agency's Schiaparelli lander, part of the ExoMars mission to Mars, launched to the Red Planet on March 14, 2016.

The Schiaparelli landing demonstrator for the European Space Agency was supposed to prepare for later work in the ExoMars exploration program. Conflicting data on the onboard computer, however, caused Schiaparelli to crash during landing on March 14, 2016. It spun rapidly (and unexpectedly) during descent, slamming into the surface so fast that the black scar left behind was visible from orbit in high-definition NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pictures.

Probing the Martian interior

NASA's InSight Lander on the surface of Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's InSight Lander arrived on the Red Planet on Nov. 26, 2018, allowing the first spacecraft devoted to probing the Red Planet's interior to begin its work. The mission measured numerous marsquakes and helped gather data to better understand the formation of Mars and other rocky planets. The mission ended in December 2022.

The only major failure of the mission was a "mole" or heat probe that was designed to move under the surface; harder-than-expected regolith frustrated more than two Earth years of efforts to dig more than a few inches. NASA abandoned the attempt in early 2021.

Exploring by land and air

NASA's ambitious Perseverance Rover touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. The car-sized rover is the most advanced robot ever sent to the Red Planet.

Perseverance or "Percy" as it's commonly referred to is busy looking for signs of ancient microbial life, to advance NASA's quest to explore the past habitability of Mars.

Percy didn't travel to the Red Planet alone; it was accompanied by Ingenuity, a Mars helicopter attached to the rover's underside during landing. Ingenuity went on to make an impressive 72 historic flights, becoming the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet. Its final flight took place on Jan. 18, 2024, when rotor-blade damage brought its mission to an end.

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