Landing sites of Mars missions
Landing sites of Mars missions
This global topographical map of Mars shows all landings on Mars to date: Mars 3, a Mars mission of the USSR, landed on Mars on 2 December 1971. Although it is the first 'soft' landing, communication broke off just 20 seconds after first contact from the surface. For this reason, NASA's Viking 1 mission is considered the first successful landing. It touched down on 20 July 1976 in the Chryse Planitia plain, followed by its sister probe Viking 2, which landed in Utopia Planitia on 3 September 1976; both missions were stationary. Mars Pathfinder was the first rover, the first vehicle on Mars, and landed on the US National Day, 4 July 1997. 2004 saw the launch of two more larger rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. On 6 August 2012 the largest Mars vehicle to date, Curiosity, landed on Mars. Like Viking, Phoenix (2008) and InSight (2018) are stationary missions. Mars 2020 will land in the Jezero Crater with the rover Perseverance on 18 February 2021. On 23 July 2020, another lander mission was launched to the Red Planet, the Chinese mission Tianwen 1, whose landing site has not yet been finally determined.
