Top Five Historic Mars Landing Attempts

1-First Landing Attempt

World’s first ever lander attempt embarked by Soviet Union (Mars 2Mv-3 No.1). The lander was launched as a part of Soviet Mars Program in direction to touch the Red planet and labeled under Mars-Venus type of spacecraft. It is considered as fourth heaviest lander in the history of lander missions having 890 kilograms of mass. But as a consequence of launch vehicle malfunction, the lander never left low earth orbit and decayed from the next day of its launch. Some articles delineate that debris of this lander remained in LEO till 19 January 1963.

2-First artificial object on Mars

Mars 2 was the first human made object to touch the red planet. It was second landing attempt made by Russians as well as third heaviest lander having a mass of 1210 kilograms. One of the most incredible part of the mission is it carried a small 4.5 kilogram of Prop-M Rover that is far apart technology to think in 1970s. However, the lander made excellent entry into the Mars atmosphere and encountered module malfunction that results steep dive and crash into the surface. The small rover never had a chance to deploy.

3-First Successful Lander on Mars

Viking-1 – the most remarkable historic landing performed by Viking lander demonstrating the technological excellence near Chryse Planitia. The prime aim of the lander is to search for life and performing biological experiments on the Martian surface. This was the first U.S lander mission attempted towards Mars. Most interesting fact about Viking landers were, since its landing all the current landers employs Viking era technology for soft-landing. However the tests, the result declared negative.

4-Second Heaviest Lander

In the antiquity of lander attempts, second heaviest lander is Phobos landers strived towards Martian moon (Phobos-2600 kilograms) focusing to explore Martian moons and interplanetary environment between the Earth and Mars. But in Mars transit, both the landers encountered communication issue. As a consequence the mission endured unsuccessful.  

5-Heaviest Lander Mission

Mars 96 – top heaviest Mars lander having mass of 3159 kilograms launched as a part of Soviet Mars Program to investigate Mars. But the launcher malfunction made the spacecraft to strand in LEO and ultimately it destroyed in orbit during re-entry. Most interesting fact about this mission is, it carried 44 international instruments onboard and a surface station with small penetrator. It is considered as the first lander to carry more number of instruments.

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