This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
It seems hard to believe, but since the 1960's humans have been sending spacecraft to Mars. The earliest pioneers were the robotic vehicles of the Soviet Union in 1960 and 1962 - but these faced a host of teething problems, from launch failures to communication failures en route to the red planet.
In 1964 NASA's Mariner 4 became humanity's first successful mission to Mars, returning images that immediately laid to rest most of our speculations about this world being any kind of Earth-analog. Mars was dry, dusty, well-cratered, and very alien.
Recently NASA posted the following video montage of all (successful) Mars missions the agency has undertaken, as well as a glimpse to the future. It's naturally rather self-congratulatory, but hey, if you can explore another world with this degree of skill I think you're allowed a little bit of celebration. And in this era of political uncertainty it doesn't hurt to remind us all of what you can do for a tiny fraction of the US GDP.
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The universe is out there, let's go look.
(Credit: NASA, JPL, Caltech)