Talk:List of missions to Mars

Status

This table would be greatly improved if it had a spacecraft status next to it, operational / crashed / mission ended / frozen / whatever. 216.127.127.26 (talk) 18:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Timeline

Here's a timeline I created, thinking it might be a useful addition. After creating it, I decided it wasn't useful enough.

72.244.200.167 (talk) 06:26, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice! You might enjoy this, from the fr wiki. Fotaun (talk) 12:08, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

What's a 'Mission to Mars'?

Are Dawn and Rosetta actually "missions to Mars"? They whizzed past and took a few snapshots--basically same thing that Mariner 4 did--but Mars was more a target of opportunity, a means (gravity assist maneuver) to an end (Ceres, Vesta, comets...) -- atropos235 ✄ (blah blah, my past) 03:18, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

NSSDC reliability, or lack thereof

While the NSSDC would appear at first glance to be a reliable source, as I have previously gone into on Template talk:Infobox spacecraft, it is a very poor source for historical missions and Soviet missions in particular. "Names" such as "Marsnik" and "Sputnik" followed by any number higher than 3, were made up by either the Western media ("Marsnik") or organisations cataloguing spacecraft ("Sputnik"). The assumption that anything hosted by NASA must be correct does not hold and is largely responsible for the extremely poor state of most of Wikipedia's articles on Soviet planetary missions. --W. D. Graham 01:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Lack of country/agency column

Is there a reason the countries and/or agencies responsible for these probes aren't listed in these tables? TastyCakes (talk) 23:42, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

It's just the way the format evolved - I didn't even notice it was missing until some time after the rewrite. In principle I have nothing against adding one, although it would have to be done in such a way as to avoid the FUBAR application in most similar articles (i.e. there should be no flags/logos, and no inconsistent application of country vs operator) --W. D. Graham 09:58, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. So which then, country or operator? Or two columns, one with each? TastyCakes (talk) 00:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I've added an operator column, with the nationality included in small print underneath - can you have a look and see what you think of it. --W. D. Graham 09:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I understand that the Soviets had several agencies (operators) competing against each other; maybe with time we can find and note every one of them. Nice job. Thank you. BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Mostly

I removed the qualifier "Mostly" because, IMHO, both of these missions were completely successful. That the data results obtained did not match expectations does not mean they failed. The mission succeeded in orbiting a perfectly working mapping probe around Mars. The probe functioned as intended, so for this column in the table it needs to be marked a success. Nick Beeson (talk) 16:02, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

The reasons for the qualifier are defined in the notes. Not all goals were achieved, not total success. Scr★pIron^IV 16:08, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Icebreaker Life

Is there a reason why Icebreaker Life is not mentioned under "planned"/"proposed"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker_Life — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ricky22p (talk • contribs) 23:04, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Mars One

Mars One is listed as one mission in 2026 with a lander, orbiter, rover and human colony. In 2026 they will only launch a orbiter and rover. In 2024 there will also be an orbiter, in 2029 there will be a lander, in 2030 the colony will be sent Clonetrooper76 (talk) 18:52, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

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SpaceX BFR move to In Development?

Since SpaceX is making developmental progress on the BFR, and it is classified as "in-development" by all standards, would there be any factual inaccuracy from moving it into the In Development section? Ultimograph5 (talk) 19:09, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not in development as a Mars mission yet. It is in development as a next-generation booster stage that could, in the future, be used for a Mars mission. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 17:38, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Success?

It's also a little overstating the case to call the Mars 3 lander a "success", since it died before even finishing transmission of a single picture; and definitely overstating the case to call the attached rover a success.

Likewise, it is puzzling to call the Deep Space 2 penetrators a "partial success". Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 21:18, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

DS-2 were failures. Thank you for fixing that. The Mars 3 lander was not "partial." The fault communication fault was likely due to the orbiter, not the lander itself. The Mars 3 orbiter relayed the landers signal back to earth since the lander couldn't do a direct transmission. The orbiter had a propellent leak en-route to Mars, which is why it ended up in a 12 day, 19 hours orbit instead of the planned 25 hour orbit. This orbit is the reason why we don't have any more data from the Mars 3 lander. The lander was battery powered, meaning it had a limited surface lifetime. Likely only a couple days. So When the lander landed, it's relay satellite was moving much faster then planned (12 day orbit, not 25 hour orbit) meaning it had a drastically reduced time to relay the signal. To add to this, the lander didn't have enough batteries to last a minimum of an additional 13 days for another communication windows, so it ran out of power before the orbiter (relay) could make another pass. This is why it's classified as success and not partial. The fault was in an entirely different spacecraft, not the lander itself. We wouldn't classify the insight lander as partial failure if NASA's Electra (radio) relay system stopped working.

TL;DR The communications fault was due to the relay orbiter, not the lander. The lander worked as intended. Jrcraft Yt (talk) 01:39, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Also, about Mars 3, User:Jrcraft Yt, what you say is contradicted by the article on Mars 3, maybe you could update the article with sources if you’re confident you’re not mistaken. In my view, although it was the first successful soft landing, it was a failure, as the mission goals were to return scientific data, take pictures, study the soil; landing was just a means to the mission goals. Grey Wanderer (talk) 02:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

When I get some time, I'll do that on the Mars 3 page. It's referenced in some (including NASA) papers including this one that contains a great deal of technical details. The other explanation is the dust storm going on at the time. If the dust storm blocked the signals, it's not a failure of the lander, it did everything it was supposed to do, Mars's weather just made it difficult to receive data.

You are arguing about what was responsible for the failure, but don't seem to disagree that it was a failure. Yes, it may have been the orbiter's system that was responsible, or possibly, yes, it may have been the dust storm that was responsible for the failure. But, regardless, it landed on the surface and transmitted no usable data. That cannot be called a mission success.

Yes, people speculate that the lander itself was not at fault. That does not turn a failure into a success.

(and I would like to highlight the word "likely" in the sentence "The fault communication fault was likely due to the orbiter". The truth is, nobody is really knows for sure what the actual failure mechanism was. It's all speculation.) Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 04:02, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

And I will vigorously assert that there is no possible definition of "success" by which you can call the Mars-3 rover even "partially" successful. Yes, the flaw was on a different system, but saying it a success because the utter failure of the rover to do anything whatsoever wasn't the rover's fault makes the term "success" meaningless. (In fact, why are we even calling this a separate spacecraft? The rover was connected to the lander by a cable. It was not an independent spacecraft at all. I propose we should just eliminate the line.) Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 15:46, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I see my edit was reverted with the note "The Prop-M is listed as separate because a lander cannot also be a rover. Same with other attached vehicles on this list."

1. Citation needed for the statement "a lander cannot also be a rover." Who made that rule, and where it is documented? However, if you really consider a rover something that operates separately from the lander, then Prop-M was not a rover. It could not rove more than the cable length from the lander.

2. There are no "other attached vehicles on the list."

I also note that the rover has been listed as "partially successful." There is no possible definition of "successful" by which this is true. It was never heard from. If you are calling this "partially successful" because the failure was on the spacecraft that carried it, then you need to list the Yinghuo-1 as successful, because after all it was the carrier spacecraft that failed. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 00:59, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

To start off, you're claiming consensus when one hasn't formed in this discussion yet WP:CONACHIEVE. Don't do that. I looked through the list to see what they meant by "other attached vehicles" and that would be Philae through Rosetta. The accepted consensus WP:CON across articles is that is that;

1) A Mars rover is different than that of a lander. Again, this is the widely agreed upon consensus throughout all of these articles.

2) Prop-M is a Mars rover as shown through discussions and consensus.

3) Mars 3 is a lander as shown through discussions and consensus.

4) None of the prior consensus has said that Prop-M isn't a rover. Thats silly to assert.

According to your own asserted "definition", "However, if you really consider a rover something that operates separately from the lander, then Prop-M was not a rover." The Sojourner rover isn't a rover because it had to stay within range of the Pathfinder lander to communicate with Earth. Not only this, this excerpt from Mars Rover "A Mars rover is a motor vehicle that travels across the surface of the planet Mars upon arrival." Your argument that Prop-M doesn't meet the "definition" of a Mars rover is incorrect. We are not here to shoehorn your personal definitions against consensus. That goes against Wikipedia's bias policy WP:POV. The widely agreed upon and accepted consensus is that Prop-M is a rover. And because the consensus clearly states that the Mars 3 lander is a lander, not a rover. And that the Prop-M rover is a rover, not a lander. So to answer your question "Citation needed for the statement "a lander cannot also be a rover" no, the prior consensus clearly states that this is the case. So they are listed as separate.

So, to recap: The consensus is that the Prop-M is a rover. The consensus is that Mars landers are different than Mars rovers, and should be listed differently. Having one person claim consensus and do everything different from all other articles for the sake of personal definition is not consensus.

In response to "I propose we should just eliminate the [Prop-M] line." I am firmly oppose to this. It goes against every other list and article regarding the subject aswell as the current, long standing, and trans-article consensus. What I did do, is change the color on the list, because that's the color convention used on spaceflight wikilists (light green to yellow). I also altered the text on the Prop-M box that better categorizes it.--Jrcraft Yt (talk) 03:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, gone for a month.

There is no possible definition of "success" by which you can call the Mars-3 rover successful. It never deployed. That's not a success, it's not a partial success, it is not a fragmentary piece of a success. It never deployed.

The Mars-3 lander you could call a partial success. It failed, but it did at least land on the planet, although it took no useful data.

In response to your comment, you wrote: "To start off, you're claiming consensus when one hasn't formed in this discussion." Huh? I just searched the talk for the word "consensus". You claimed consensus twelve times. I did not use the word at all. I have no idea what you are talking about. The only person agreeing with you is you. That's not "consensus.Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 23:58, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the edit made to the article yesterday that was reverted... The revert erased a number of changes, including typographical corrections and additions to other topics, but based on the edit history and this talk page presumably this argument about the Mars 3 lander and rover was the reason for the reversion.

I agree with User:Jrcraft Yt that Prop-M should be considered a rover, not just part of the lander. However, I also agree with User:Grey Wanderer and User:Skepticalgiraffe that the Mars 3 lander and especially the rover did not produce successful mission outcomes. While the Mars 3 lander should be credited with the first soft landing on Mars, the outcome of the mission (the transmission of a partial image that showed "a gray background with no details" during the 20 seconds before contact was lost) cannot be considered a success.

That applies even more so to the rover, which failed to produce any data at all. As contact with the lander was lost before the rover would have been deployed, there is no proof that the rover even made contact with the Martian surface much less operated successfully.

There is evidence that Beagle 2 made a soft landing, but because it failed to communicate it is not considered a success. By the same token, the Mars 3 rover cannot be considered a success either.

If the deployment of Tianwen-1's Zhurong rover proceeds as planned, it will be the first rover outside of NASA to successfully operate on Mars. Mars 3's Prop-M may merit a mention, but an inoperative rover cannot be considered a successful mission outcome. -Mysterius (talk) 09:26, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

China considers themselves to be the third country to land a rover.--Jrcraft Yt (talk) 20:43, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the link, User:Jrcraft Yt. However, as previously discussed the question is whether the outcome of the mission was "successful" or not. Landing the spacecraft is only part of what constitutes a successful mission. For example, Beagle 2 may have soft-landed but it is not considered a success because it failed to deliver useful data. Similarly, contact was lost before the Mars 3 lander would have deployed the Prop-M rover.

While not the main thrust of the argument, I remarked in my previous comment that Zhurong would be "the first rover outside of NASA to successfully operate on Mars". Likewise the SCMP article states "China would become only the second country to accomplish the task after the US", the task being to return data. I would add that while the article implies the Mars 3 rover sent back data, that is incorrect: there was brief communication with the Mars 3 lander, but not the Prop-M rover. (Tangentially, a previous version of the article incorrectly stated that NASA had only landed three Mars probes. That mistake has since been corrected.)

Also, the SCMP is a privately owned newspaper based in Hong Kong. While it represents one Chinese perspective, it does not always reflect other Chinese views or the official views of the Chinese government. Furthermore, Wikipedia does not depend on any one viewpoint, private or public. (For what it's worth CGTN, a state-owned broadcaster, stated: "The Soviet Union made its first two attempts in 1971 – Mars 2 crash-landed on the planet and Mars 3 ceased transmissions 20 seconds after landing. In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 conducted the first successful landing, with photos sent back to Earth. The U.S. agency's Sojourner (landed 1997) became the first rover to operate on another planet.")

The Mars 3 orbiter was a success, the Mars 3 lander achieved the first successful soft-landing but not its greater mission, and the Prop-M rover remains an interesting historical footnote. The main articles for Mars 3 ("first spacecraft to attain a soft landing on Mars"), Viking 1 ("first successful Mars lander"), and Sojourner ("first wheeled vehicle to rove another planet") are clear regarding their respective accomplishments. -Mysterius (talk) 05:11, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

References

Deployable Camera

I don't think that the deployable camera on Tianwen-1 should be counted as a separate "mission to Mars", since it did not and had never been intended to take any kind of observations of Mars. It took a photo of the Tianwen-1 spacecraft after trans-Mars injection, and ran out of battery hundreds of millions of kilometers before Tianwen-1 got anywhere near Mars. Yes, the dead hulk of the spacecraft (if you call a deployable camera a spacecraft) did eventually pass Mars, many months later, but if you call every dead piece of a spacecraft that flies past Mars a "mission to Mars", there are a lot more pieces that will have to be included.

You could, however, make a reasonable case that the MARCO-1 and MARCO-2 cubesats are two separate spacecraft, not one, since the both operated independently during their Mars fly-bys. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 21:18, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

I have also noticed this and it has irked me. Since this is a list of missions, Tiawen-1 is one mission, as is Mars 2020. Grey Wanderer (talk) 02:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the mission vs spacecraft list, a solution could be a column to the left of the first column that encompasses the respective spacecraft of each mission. I made a version of the chart for Mars 2020 with that proposed change.

Mission	Spacecraft	Launch Date	Operator	Mission type	Outcome	Remarks	Carrier rocket
Mars 2020	Perseverance	30 July 2020	NASA United States	Rover	En route	Proposed landing: 18 February 2021	Atlas V 541
	Ingenuity			Helicopter	En route	Proposed landing: 18 February 2021. To be deployed from the Perseverance rover

Would that be something to consider implementing? It's the same chart, just with an extra column in the beginning . --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 03:44, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Really like the extra column idea. Looks like it’s long overdue. There are a number of missions this would be applicable to. In regards to Mars 3, even if it was the dust storm, it still seems like a failur; an engendering vs scientific difference I suppose. Grey Wanderer (talk) 03:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Greyed out boxes on the chart

There are two greyed out rows, specifically the Rosetta mission and the Dawn mission. There is no indication as to why they are grey, nor do I think anyone not already deeply involved will understand why. They aren't active, and are otherwise unremarkable. As an unrelated aside, the success marker for the orbiter of Phobos 2 seems to be improperly marked, but does say Successful even if not correctly. It's got a white box and brackets instead of a green one and no brackets. PizzaBoy02 (talk) 13:57, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm guessing that they are possibly grey because they were not actually missions to Mars, but missions that flew past Mars on the way to a different destination? Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 15:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I almost think we should have a totally separate section for flybys/gravity assist. There are going to be a lot more of these in the coming years, and I think the main chart would really benefit by being strictly missions to Mars itself. Grey Wanderer (talk) 19:17, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Im in favor of keeping them in the same list for chronology and conciseness sake, but I added a key at the top.--Jrcraft Yt (talk) 20:28, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

out of date

Someone please update the following:

"if they have not decayed as of 2016"

"The Viking 1 orbiter is predicted not to decay until at least 2019."

47.139.40.107 (talk) 07:10, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

ESA is not a body of the EU

ESA is not an agency or body of the European Union (EU), and has non-EU countries (Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) as members. So why do this article contain EU flags when mentioning ESA ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthieu2743 (talk • contribs) 17:48, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Concur, Matthieu2743. Overuse of national or multi-national flags is a problem on many spaceflight-related articles within Wikipedia. Seems to be a bit of a legacy from the first several decades of after the time that humans came to possess the technology of spaceflight (1957), and that technology was developed exclusively by nation states. An unfortunate leftover of the cold war and post-WWII missile weapon development where the separation between spaceflight and military technology was, seemingly, not possible. Today, some spaceflight ventures originate from nations states, and increasingly, some are more privately-developed and privately-operated flights. I've removed the EU flag icons from the ESA missions mentioned on this page. N2e (talk) 18:09, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

The flag should be there. It is not only the flag of the European Union, but also the flag of the Council of Europe, and it is a pan-European institution outside the EU. This flag is therefore the flag of the whole of Europe and not just the EU. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nadadmiral (talk • contribs) 15:57, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

EscaPADE Mars mission

The EscaPADE Mars mission has been approved by NASA, and the specific satellite bus for these two smallsat space probes have recently been selected: Rocket Lab Photon. Seems would be a good addition to the List. N2e (talk) 17:56, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Starship

Starship is currently in development so should be moved 2A00:23C7:310F:4601:80C2:D5DD:2C57:A388 (talk) 14:56, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Starship/bfr

Starship is reusable so it will not have one set purpose, after the moon and mars it can be used for any planetary body. Its main purpose for now anyway, is mars. 2A00:23C7:310F:4601:80C2:D5DD:2C57:A388 (talk) 15:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Missing Prop-M mentions?

1. The place where Prop-M is listed as part of the Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions doesn't link to the actual Prop-M article, I feel like that would be helpful to have there. I realize it's not a mission-specific article, but it would still help.

2. In the Prop-M article it's stated that Mars 6 and Mars 7 also had Prop-M rovers, but that's not at all shown in the mission lists. The parts of the mission shown are only the flyby and lander parts. (Yes, I know Prop-M rovers are attached to the lander, so they might fall under the lander category, but if they're listed by Mars 2 and 3, they should be listed by 6 and 7.) Is this something that should be fixed? 185.163.72.18 (talk) 15:55, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Definition of launch failure

Mars 96 and Fobos-Grunt are listed as "spacecraft failure" rather than "launch failure", apparently because is wasn't the launch vehicles that failed. However, I think they should count as launch failures because they didn't even managed to escape Earth orbit, as I agree with Skepticalgiraffe above that the the fact that they failed, or in this case failed at the very beginning of the missions, is more important than whether it was the spacecraft's fault. Besides, at least for Mars 96 it was an upper stage rocket, not the spacecraft itself, that failed. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 18:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)