Top Ten Rover Missions to Mars

Kosmos 419

May 10, 1971

Launch: May 10, 1971 Kosmos 419 reached Earth orbit, but in it’s forth stage, which should have sent it on it’s way to Mars, didn’t work. Because of this the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere and was destroyed.

Mariner 9

May 30, 1971

Launch: May 30, 1971 Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to go into orbit around a planet. However, excitement in it’s arrival was quickly ended by a big cloud of black. Quite literally. A Martian storm, which had started in late 1971, had grown to cover the entire planet.

2001 Mars Odyssey

Apr 7, 2001

Launch: April 7, 2001 Odyssey’s main job is to capture images of the Martian surface, and is making both daytime and nightime, progress. It has detected massive amounts of water lying below Mars’s surface in near polar regions.

Mars Express and Beagle 2

Jun 2, 2003

Launch: June 2nd, 2003 When it was originally being shot to Mars the Beagle successfully was launched and all was good until suddenly it disappeared. Although all the tests and challenges this robot pulled through were great, the real thing is always going to be different. 5 days later NASA got a single that Beagle had pulled through and now was orbiting Mars. Right after that NASA got many amazing, 3D, coloured pictures of Mars from afar.

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity

Jul 7, 2003

Launch: July 7th, 2003 Opportunity wasn’t really sent to Mars to find anything specific. It was just sent there to learn, and that’s exactly what it did. As soon as it landed this rover immediately found a new material that had previously been seen by a Mars Global Surveyor. After moving for more than 33 kilometers, Opportunity landed at its new target, a 22 kilometer-dimeter crater, a target it is currently exploring.

Mars Resistance Orbiter

Aug 12, 2005

Launch: August 12th, 2005 This orbiter was sent to Mars for one main reason: to find water. It has the most powerful camera and spectrometer ever sent to Mars on a rover, and it’s even looking for possible landing and livings sites if/when humans come to live on Mars.

Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory) (MSL)

Nov 6, 2011

Launch: November 26th, 2011 Curiosity is the next generation rover, building a spirit of curiosity of what we could do with it. It landed in Gale Crater, the location of a 5+ km tall layered mountain which Curiosity has found was at least a small amount of material from a lake setting.

Mars Orbit Mission (MOM

Nov 5, 2013

Launch: November 5th 2013 Sometimes called “Mangalyaan” the MOM was India’s first interplanetary spacecraft. It was a robot with a 15-kilogram payload of 5 science instruments. It entered orbit just 2 days after the arrival of NASA’s MAVEN mission.

MAVEN

Nov 18, 2013

Launch: November 18th, 2013 MAVEN, which stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, has grabbed a hold of first-of-a-kind information. This information is about the climate, habitability, and deeper understanding of the upper Martian atmosphere and ionosphere.

Mars 1 (Sputnik 23)

Jan 10, 2017

Launch: November 1st, 1962 Mars 1 was launched and begin the trip to Mars, it started to come back with information on interplanetary space. However, controllers lost contact with Mars 1 on March 21st, 1963, when the spacecraft was 107 billion kilometers (66 million miles) from Earth. The single was lost. The spacecraft we think is now in solar orbit.