Timeline of Mars exploration: Mariner flybys, Viking landers, rovers from Sojourner to Perseverance, and the international missions of the 2020s.
Humanity's robotic exploration of Mars: from the first grainy Mariner 4 flyby images in 1965 through the Viking landers, rovers from Sojourner to Perseverance, and the international fleet of 2021.
The Soviet Union launches the first probes aimed at Mars; both fail to reach Earth orbit.
Soviet Mars 1 launches toward Mars but loses radio contact en route in March 1963.
NASA's Mariner 4 returns the first close-up images of another planet - 21 photos of a cratered, barren Mars.
Twin NASA flybys image the equator and southern pole, refining knowledge of the thin CO2 atmosphere.
Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, mapping Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris.
The Soviet Mars 3 lander achieves the first soft landing on Mars but transmits for only about 14.5 seconds.
NASA's Viking 1 makes the first fully successful Mars landing in Chryse Planitia and operates for over six years.
Viking 2 lands in Utopia Planitia, running biology experiments and weather monitoring alongside its twin.
Mars Pathfinder's airbag landing delivers Sojourner, the first rover to operate on another planet.
MGS begins nearly a decade of orbital mapping, opening the era of continuous Mars observation.
NASA loses the Mars Climate Orbiter to a famous English-vs-metric units navigation error.
2001 Mars Odyssey arrives, detecting subsurface hydrogen and becoming a long-lived data relay.
ESA's first Mars orbiter arrives; its Beagle 2 lander is lost, but the orbiter still operates today.
NASA's Spirit rover finds evidence of past water activity and drives 7.7 km before falling silent in 2010.
Opportunity finds definitive signs of ancient liquid water and roams for over 14 years and 45 km.
MRO enters orbit with the HiRISE camera, imaging the surface at resolutions down to ~30 cm.
The Phoenix lander scrapes up and confirms water ice just below the surface of the northern plains.
The sky-crane landing delivers Curiosity, which finds that ancient Mars had conditions suitable for microbial life.
NASA's MAVEN studies atmospheric escape; days later India's Mars Orbiter Mission succeeds on its first attempt.
InSight lands with a seismometer and detects over a thousand marsquakes before dust ends the mission.
The UAE's Hope orbiter and China's Tianwen-1 reach Mars orbit a day apart, joining a record international fleet.
Perseverance begins caching rock samples for future return and carries the Ingenuity helicopter.
Ingenuity performs the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, eventually logging 72 flights.
China's Zhurong rover lands in Utopia Planitia, making China the second nation to operate a Mars rover.
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