October 22nd, 2009
Missions to Mars Poster
Written by Nancy Atkinson
If you enjoyed the zoomable poster of 50 year of space exploration, you'll probably also like this new poster of Mars missions. It's basically a bar graph, with missions to Mars as listed chronologically, and the mission result is coded by how close the corresponding bar reaches to Mars. The poster also lists a few of the upcoming missions as well. Cool!
Filed under: Mars
Tags: MarsRelated stories on Universe Today
Comment policy: Be nice and brief. Don't advertise your stuff, or promote your personal theories. We'll delete any comments that break these policies. Click here for more details.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Two things stand out from that poster.
1) I didn't know about all those Soviet Mars mission failures in the 60s.
2) We've had a remarkable run of success in recent years — long may it continue!
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
A link to a blog to another blog that links to the actual poster… sheesh!
Anyways, this is a cool picture. It shows in stark relief how many missions to Mars resulted in failure in the early years (aka almost all of them).
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
It's interesting that USA failed in 1998/99.
Russia and China want to bring a piece of Mars back in 2009!?
I like how EU haven't failed.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:22 am
very user friendly chart. nicely done.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:36 am
@ HAU:
I believe it's a Phobos sample return.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:39 am
Oh, and IIRC the Beagle lander failed, so the chart is misdirecting there.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Torbjorn, yeah, I wondered about ESA's 2003 Beagle 2 Mars mission. Details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2 .
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:42 pm
The poster I see explicitly lists Beagle 2 as "lost on arrival". Was the poster changed since the above 2 comments?
October 24th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Wasn't. I just took it as a success, as a whole. That violet strip needs 2 circles.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Nope. It would have two circles if the Beagle had accomplished its mission. It would be like the Vikings: a lander and an orbiter. Since the Beagle failed, it has only one circle for the (very) successful orbiter.
The chart lists partial failures in writing. It may not be immediately clear (many people won't read the captions), but I guess it's the best possible way to do it, baceuse it's the only way to convey what part of the mission succeeded and what part of it failed.