(AFP) The European Space Agency hopes that technologies tested during its ExoMars programme could pave the way for a return mission to the Red planet in the 2020s, as well as establish if Mars ever harboured life. A brief history of Mars exploration in videographics.
JONATHAN RENAUD DE LA FAVERIE KATHERINE LEVY SPENCER / AFP VIDEOGRAPHICS / AFP
In the 20th century US-USSR “Space Race”, NASA was the first to make it to Mars.
In 1965, Mariner 4 captured the first close-up images of the Red Planet.
Several Mariner missions followed, producing thousands of images of Earth’s planetary neighbour.
In 1971, Russia had its first success with the Mars 2 unmanned space probe but failed to place a lander. Mars 3 arrived the same year and released the first-ever lander onto the surface of Mars. It sent back 20 seconds of video data.
From 1975 to 1980, two orbiters and two landers sent by NASA mapped and analysed the planet’s surface searching for signs of Martian life.
In 1997, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder placed a stationary lander and the first-ever surface rover, Sojourner, on the Red Planet.
In 2003, Europe joined Martian exploration for the first time with its Mars Express orbiter and Beagle 2 lander, which never communicated with Earth.
In November 2011, Curiosity Rover was launched from Cape Canaveral. It was the largest and most sophisticated exploration vehicle ever to be landed on another planet.
Its explorative mission lasted two years, during which it collected evidence that liquid water and ancient lakes once existed on the Red Planet, and detected methane — which on Earth is produced in large part by living organisms — in Mars’ atmosphere.
In 2014, India became the first Asian power to place a spacecraft, dubbed Mangalyaan, into Mars orbit.
In March 2016, the joint Euro-Russian EXOMARS spacecraft blasted off from Earth as the first in a two-phase exploration to determine whether Mars ever harboured life, or may do so today.
The orbiting probe will analyse methane levels around Mars while Schiaparelli, the lander it will place on the surface in October, will test heat shields and parachutes in preparation for a subsequent rover landing.
Sources: NASA, ESA