Going to Mars, on someone else's ruble

Over at Jen's History and Stuff, Pete posted a nice review of US Mars exploration missions to date (he also included the UK's Beagle2).

As an addendum, here's a quick list of Soviet Mars missions.

October 1960: Two unnamed Soviet spacecraft achieve Earth orbit only, fail to fly past Mars.

October 1962: An unnamed Soviet spacecraft achieves Earth orbit only, fails to fly past Mars.

November 1962: Soviet Mars 1 spacecraft radio fails en route to flyby of Mars. A second, unnamed Soviet spacecraft achieves Earth orbit only, fails to fly past Mars.

November 1964: Soviet Zond 2 spacecraft flies past Mars, but radio fails and no data are returned.

May 1971: Soviet Kosmos 419 lander achieves Earth orbit only. The Soviet Mars 2 orbiter-lander arrive at Mars in November 1971; no useful data received after lander burns up. Soviet Mars 3 orbiter-lander arrives December 1971; lander operates on surface for 20 seconds before failing.

July 1973: Soviet Mars 4 spacecraft flies past Mars in February 1974, but fails to enter orbit. That same month, the Soviet Mars 5 spacecraft arrives in orbit, but operates for only a few days.

August 1973: Soviet Mars 6 and 7 combination flyby module-lander spacecraft arrive at Mars in March 1974. Mars 6 lander smashes into Mars; Mars 7 lander misses planet.

July 1988: Soviet Phobos 1 orbiter and lander fail one month after launch. Phobos 2, launched five days after Phobos 1, is lost March 1989 near the Mars moon for which it was named.

November 1996: Russian Mars 96 orbiter and landers fail on launch.

And in July, 1998, the Japanese took a shot at Mars with their Nozomi spacecraft. It failed to enter Mars orbit in December 2003.

Posted by Ted at January 27, 2004 06:17 AM | TrackBack