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Missions to Mars Poster

by Nancy Atkinson on October 22, 2009

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Missions to Mars poster. Click for larger version.

Missions to Mars poster. Click for larger version.

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!

Via Fast Company

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About

Nancy Atkinson is Universe Today's Senior Editor. She also is the host of the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast and works with the Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts. Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

Tagged as: Mars

  • tacitus

    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!

  • Dave Finton

    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).

  • HeadAroundU

    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.

  • Pvt.Pantzov

    very user friendly chart. nicely done.

  • Torbjorn Larsson OM

    @ HAU:

    I believe it’s a Phobos sample return.

  • Torbjorn Larsson OM

    Oh, and IIRC the Beagle lander failed, so the chart is misdirecting there.

  • Jon Hanford

    Torbjorn, yeah, I wondered about ESA’s 2003 Beagle 2 Mars mission. Details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2 .

  • slang

    The poster I see explicitly lists Beagle 2 as “lost on arrival”. Was the poster changed since the above 2 comments?

  • HeadAroundU

    Wasn’t. I just took it as a success, as a whole. That violet strip needs 2 circles.

  • Jorge

    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.

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