Artist's impression of the ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars. (credit: ESA)
The spaceways to Mars are littered with the debris of probes trying reach the dusty red planet's surface. In 55 years of Mars exploration, no space agency in the world other than NASA has ever landed a probe on the surface of Mars that survived more than a handful of seconds.
NASA's success in putting a sequence of increasingly larger and more complex onto the surface of Mars, culminating with the 1-ton Curiosity rover in 2012, has been rather remarkable in comparison to other space agencies. Eight of NASA's nine missions to the surface of Mars have been successful, with only its Mars Polar Lander failing to safely reach the surface in 1999.
By contrast, four of five Soviet Union landers failed to reach Mars safely, and the one that did, Mars 3 in 1971, survived for only about 15 seconds. In addition there have been a number of failed Soviet and Russian attempts to reach the Martian moon Phobos.
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