It is also a symbol of how, when it comes to scientific exploration, the world is in this together; Hope was accompanied by China’s Tianwen-1, which entered the Martian orbit on February 10 and Nasa’s rover Perseverance, scheduled to land on February 18. All three missions had to overcome daunting challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, which makes their successes even more significant.
The history of Mars missions is riddled with failures. The odds of success are usually 50/50. The first attempt to reach Mars was made by USSR in 1960 with the Mars 1M No 1 mission, which ended in a launch failure. The first country to succeed was the US, with a fly-by mission – Mariner 4 – in which the probe went past Mars in 1965. Nasa's Mariner 9 probe successfully entered orbit for the first time in November 1971 and a month later, the USSR’s Mars 3 was the first lander to successfully land on the planet.