Filed under
orbiter
15 milestones, in chronological order.
- 14 November 1971First Contact
Mariner 9 arrives into a planet-wide dust storm
The first spacecraft ever to orbit another planet reached Mars to find the surface hidden by dust. It waited, then mapped volcanoes, a 4,000 km canyon and dry riverbeds.
- 25 July 1976First Contact
A mesa in Cydonia looks like a face
Viking 1 orbiter frame 35A72 caught a mesa a kilometre and a half across under a low sun. The shadows read as eyes, nose and mouth, and the argument ran for 25 years.
- July 1988 – March 1989The Rover Decades
The Soviet Union loses both Phobos probes
Phobos 1 died in September 1988 to a flawed command sequence. Phobos 2 reached Mars orbit and failed in March 1989, weeks before dropping its landers.
- 12 September 1997The Rover Decades
Mars Global Surveyor maps the planet Mars Observer lost
Mars Observer died three days short of orbit in 1993. Its instruments were rebuilt as Global Surveyor, which found fossil crustal magnetism and geologically fresh gullies.
- 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.
- 28 May 2002The Rover Decades
Odyssey counts neutrons and finds buried ice
Neutron counts fell away over both poles. Odyssey read that as ice within a metre of the surface — by one estimate enough to fill Lake Michigan twice, and a target for landers.
- 14 December 2003The Rover Decades
Nozomi takes five years to reach Mars, then flies past
Japan's first interplanetary probe lost the fuel to stop at Mars to a malfunctioning valve in 1998. ISAS flew it five more years anyway, then watched it coast past at 1,000 km.
- 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.
- 10 March 2006The Rover Decades
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter becomes the eye and the relay
The sharpest camera ever sent to another planet resolves 30 centimetres per pixel from 300 km up, and the same spacecraft relays much of what the rovers below it send home.
- 21 September 2014Follow the Water
MAVEN starts weighing the air Mars loses
The first orbiter built for the upper atmosphere measured Mars shedding roughly 100 grams of gas per second to the solar wind — and about ten times that during solar storms.
- 24 September 2014Follow the Water
Mangalyaan reaches Mars orbit on the first try
India placed a 15-kilogram science payload in Mars orbit for about 74 million dollars, becoming the first nation to reach Mars orbit on its first attempt.
- 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.
- 9 February 2021The Present Push
Hope arrives, and the Arab world reaches another planet
The UAE had no deep-space programme six years before a 27-minute burn spent half of Hope's fuel to capture the first interplanetary mission flown by any Arab nation.
- 10 February – 15 May 2021The Present Push
China arrives at Mars and lands a rover on its first try
Tianwen-1 entered orbit on 10 February and dropped Zhurong onto Utopia Planitia three months later — orbiter, lander and rover delivered on a country's first attempt.
- 13 November 2025The Present Push
Two small orbiters end a five-year launch drought
Nothing had left Earth for Mars since July 2020. ESCAPADE's twin orbiters broke the drought — then parked at a Lagrange point to wait a year for the transfer window.