Filed under
lander
8 milestones, in chronological order.
- 27 November and 2 December 1971First Contact
Mars 3 lands, transmits for 20 seconds, and stops
Mars 2's lander crashed and became the first human object on the surface. Mars 3 touched down intact, sent 20 seconds of signal, and went silent for good.
- 20 July and 3 September 1976First Contact
Viking 1 and 2 land and refuse to die
Two orbiters, two landers and roughly a billion 1970s dollars. Designed for 90 days on the surface, Viking 1 kept transmitting from Chryse Planitia for over six years.
- July – September 1976First Contact
The Viking biology results that never settled
One of Viking's three biology experiments came back positive at both landing sites. The gas chromatograph found no organic molecules at all, and the argument has never closed.
- 23 September and 3 December 1999The Rover Decades
Two spacecraft lost at Mars in ten weeks
Climate Orbiter flew to 57 km altitude instead of 226 because two teams used different units. Ten weeks later Polar Lander probably shut its engines off 40 metres up.
- 25 December 2003The Rover Decades
Europe arrives at Mars; Beagle 2 does not call home
Mars Express slid into orbit on Christmas morning. Beagle 2, released six days earlier, went silent — and was found in 2015 on the ground, partly unfolded.
- 25 May 2008The Rover Decades
Phoenix digs five centimetres and touches ice
Phoenix landed on rockets at 68 degrees north and scraped down to white material. It vanished in four sols — ice, not salt — and in September the lidar watched snow fall.
- 19 October 2016Follow the Water
Europe makes orbit and loses Schiaparelli
One second of saturated gyro data convinced a lander it was already underground. It cut its parachute at 3.7 km and hit Mars at 540 km/h.
- 26 November 2018Follow the Water
InSight listens to the inside of Mars
The first seismometer set directly on another planet's surface logged 1,300 marsquakes and sized a liquid core. Its heat probe never managed to bury itself.