Five Soviet probes try for Mars and all five fail
Between 1960 and 1962 the Soviet Union launched five probes at Mars. Four never escaped Earth; the fifth, Mars 1, fell silent 106 million kilometres out.
On 10 October 1960 a modified R-7 lifted off from Tyuratam carrying a 650-kilogram probe the West later called Marsnik 1. Vibration from second-stage ignition damaged the gyroscopic pitch control, the rocket veered, and the engines were cut at 310 seconds; the wreckage fell from 120 kilometres into eastern Siberia. Four days later its twin failed at almost the same point for a different reason: 290 seconds after launch the third-stage turbopumps could not build pressure to ignite, traced to a failed ground valve that let the kerosene freeze before it reached the pump.
Sputnik 22 went up in the next window, on 24 October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and either broke apart on the way into orbit or had its escape stage explode during the burn for Mars. US Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar in Alaska detected the debris, momentarily feared as the opening of a Soviet nuclear attack. Eleven days later Sputnik 24, an attempted lander, also came apart, its pieces staying in Earth orbit until January 1963.
One of the five got away. Mars 1 launched on 1 November 1962 onto an interplanetary trajectory, the first spacecraft successfully sent towards Mars. Then a gas valve in its orientation system began to leak. Controllers fell back on gyroscopic stabilisation and kept talking to it through 61 radio sessions, at first every two days, then every five. On 21 March 1963, Mars 1 went quiet at 106.76 million kilometres, probably because the orientation system had failed. It passed roughly 193,000 kilometres from Mars on 19 June 1963.
None of this was admitted at the time: the stranded probes went unnamed, and their Sputnik numbers came from the US Naval Space Command. Only missions that worked got real names. Reaching Mars meant restarting a rocket stage in vacuum, hitting a moving target eight months out and keeping a spacecraft alive throughout; in 1960 the Soviet programme had done none of it.