Mars Exploration : 50 Years of Red Planet LandingS
Credit : NASA .
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Determining whether life exists or has ever existed on Mars is one of the major scientific questions of our time . The red planet has been a source of mysteries for many decades . In order to answer these questions , more than 40 missions have attempted to reach Mars to solve the planet ’ s mysteries in the last 50 years , each with different grades of success . In November 1962 , the Soviet Union ’ s Sputnik 25 was the first probe launched in an attempt to enter the atmosphere of Mars . However , the spacecraft failed to leave Earth ’ s orbit . The first fully successful touchdown on Mars had to wait until the arrival of the U . S . Viking 1 lander in July 1976 , followed by the Viking 2 lander on September 3 . Both missions returned more than
50,000 photos of the red planet . Since then , there have been five more successful landings on Mars , all by NASA . Mars Pathfinder , launched in December 2010 , was originally designed as a technology demonstration of a way to deliver an instrumented lander and a free-ranging robotic rover to the surface of the Mars . Pathfinder not only accomplished this goal but also returned an unprecedented amount of data and outlived its primary design life . The U . S . Mars exploration rover Opportunity launched in July 2003 and landed on Mars in January 2004 for a three-month mission in the Meridiani Planum region . Thanks to the data provided by the U . S . rover , this region was selected as the target of ExoMars ’ Schiaparelli
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