The first attempt to send a spacecraft to Mars took place in 1960 The Soviet Union tried to launch a probe But the spacecraft's rockets failed to produce enough power so the probe fell back to Earth In 1962 the Soviet Union tried again but still faced problems Two spacecraft fell apart before leaving Earth's orbit A third spacecraft successfully headed toward Mars but scientists lost contact with it before it reached the planet The United States soon followed with its own Mars missions The country's space agency the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA launched Mariner 3 in 1964 But the spacecraft's protective shell would not open Without this shield Mariner 3 could not make the journey to Mars NASA tried again with Mariner 4 This spacecraft traveled through space for eight months It flew past Mars in July 1965 Mariner 4
This model shows what Mariner 4 looked like made scientific measurements and took 21 pictures The fuzzy pictures showed an ancient surface with many craters In 1969 NASA sent two more probes to Mars Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 flew by the planet and took hundreds of pictures
On November 14 1971 Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars This probe took more than 7 000 pictures The images revealed many things about the planet's surface They showed giant volcanoes many times larger than Earth's biggest mountains Other photos showed plains craters ice caps and water cut channels They even revealed a huge canyon Scientists used the photos to make maps of the Martian surface These maps were important for NASA's next Mars mission In this mission NASA hoped to land spacecraft on the planet's surface The maps helped planners to choose the best landing spots Throughout the 1960s the Soviet Union had also attempted several more missions to Mars Most of the missions had ended in failure Finally two missions in 1971 were partly successful Each
Mariner 9 photographed channels on the surface of Mars mission included a lander that descended to the planet's surface and an orbiter that stayed above Mars 2 reached Mars on November 27 but its lander crashed on the surface In December the Mars 3 lander descended to the surface It sent only 20 seconds of data before contact was lost But it had made the first successful Mars landing
