MARS MISSIONS
Since 1960, humanity launched dozens of missions to Mars to learn more about our planetary neighbor. Mars appears to be a world once rich in water and perhaps, in life, presenting an interesting counterpart to Earth. Since the first successful flyby in 1965, four space agencies have successfully made it to Mars: NASA, the former Soviet Union space program, the European Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organization, while others, including the space agencies in Russia, Japan and China, have attempted Mars or Martian moon missions without success. The latest batch of Mars-bound missions in February 2021 were NASA's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, the United Arab Emirates' Hope orbiter (a first for that country), and China's Tianwen-1 orbital and lander-rover mission (another attempt for China to reach Mars).
​NASA's Perseverance rover reccently landed on Mars. It has also started to send photos of the Martian terrain to us back home.
​The following timeline will show us some of the important missions that were carried out on mMars in the past years.
Well known Mars Missions in the last few years
Spirit and Opportunity rover : 2003-04
Two powerful Mars rovers are on the red planet. They have far greater mobility than the 1997 Mars Pathfinder rover. Each rover carries a sophisticated set of instruments to search for evidence of liquid water that may have been present in the planet's past. The rovers are identical to each other, but are exploring different regions of Mars.
Phoenix lander : 2008
The Phoenix Mars Lander successfully landed on the north polar region of Mars. Its mission is to dig up and analyze icy soil. The mission is the first chosen for NASA's Scout program, an initiative for smaller, lower-cost, competed spacecraft. Named for the resilient mythological bird, Phoenix uses a lander that was intended for use by 2001's Mars Surveyor lander prior to its cancellation. It also carries a complex suite of instruments that are improved variations of those that flew on the lost Mars Polar Lander.
ISRO : Mars Orbiter Mission : 2014
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan, is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is India's first interplanetary mission and it made it the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to do so on its maiden attempt.
An illustration of the relative 'tilt' in the orbits of Earth and Mars
The Phoenix Lander
The MOM satellite
RECENT TIMES
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed several launch vehicles and rocket engines, as well as the Dragon cargo spacecraft and the Starlink satellite constellation (providing internet access), and has flown humans and cargo to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Dragon 2.
SpaceX has already won many launch contracts from NASA COTS (Commercial Orbital Transport Services), the USANational Defense satellites and the Kazakhstan government to launch their satellites.