All Mars Missions

NASA · flyby 1964-12

Mariner 3 failed to reach Mars after its protective launch shroud did not separate, leaving solar panels unable to deploy and draining the spacecraft's batteries. The mission never performed its intended flyby. Lessons from the failure directly enabled Mariner 4's success: JPL rebuilt the fairing in magnesium and tested deployment under simulated vacuum conditions, a remediation that took only five weeks.

Soviet Space Programme · flyby 1963-06-19

Mars 1 was the first spacecraft intentionally launched toward Mars, but contact was lost on March 21, 1963 when the attitude-control system failed and the antenna could no longer be pointed at Earth. The spacecraft is presumed to have passed Mars at approximately 193,000 km on June 19, 1963, but no data was received. It remains a milestone as the world's first attempted Mars flyby mission.

NASA · flyby 1965-07-14

Mariner 4 revolutionised planetary science with humanity's first close-up look at Mars. Its 21 images and radio-occultation atmospheric measurement shattered pre-existing optimistic models: instead of a warm, canal-laced world, Mars appeared cold, cratered, and thin-atmosphered with no detected magnetic field. The findings redirected Mars science toward understanding the planet as a potentially dead world — a view that subsequent missions would complicate.

NASA · flyby 1969-07-31

Mariner 6 was the first of a coordinated dual-spacecraft reconnaissance of Mars in 1969, flying over the equatorial and southern hemisphere regions. Its improved imaging and infrared spectrometry provided the first systematic temperature measurements and revealed terrain diversity beyond the cratered plains seen by Mariner 4. Combined data from Mariner 6 and 7 significantly advanced understanding of Martian atmospheric composition and surface diversity.

NASA · flyby 1969-08-05

Mariner 7 completed the 1969 dual-flyby reconnaissance by targeting Mars's south polar region, where it confirmed CO2 frost as the dominant polar cap constituent. Together with Mariner 6, it laid the empirical foundation for the subsequent Mariner 9 orbital mission. The ~200 combined images from both spacecraft gave scientists their first systematic global survey of Martian surface and atmospheric properties.

ESA · flyby 2007-02-25

Rosetta used Mars for a gravity-assist on February 25, 2007, picking up orbital energy for its eventual rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. During the close approach, several instruments operated in Mars-observation mode, returning useful plasma environment and upper-atmosphere UV data as a secondary science product. The manoeuvre is considered a textbook example of multi-body interplanetary navigation.

ESA / JAXA · flyby 2020-04-10

BepiColombo performed a Mars gravity assist on April 10, 2020, the first of several planetary swing-bys required to reach Mercury without excessive propellant cost. Despite operating within the constrained stacked-spacecraft configuration (Mercury Transfer Module + Mercury Planetary Orbiter + Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter), several science instruments successfully observed Mars's upper atmosphere and plasma environment during the approach. BepiColombo arrived at Mercury in late 2025.