Mars Exploration Fast Facts
Here’s some background information about Mars exploration. The United States and the Soviet Union are the only two countries to land a spacecraft on Mars.
Facts
There have been nine successful US Mars landings: Viking 1 and Viking 2 (both 1976), Pathfinder (1997), Spirit and Opportunity (both 2004), Phoenix (2008), Curiosity (2012), InSight (2018) and Perseverance (2021).
The only other country to land a spacecraft on Mars was the Soviet Union in 1971 and 1973.
The United States, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India have successfully sent spacecraft to enter Mars’ orbit.
Timeline
1965 – Mariner 4 passes within 6,000 miles (about 9,650 kilometers) of Mars and takes the first close-up photos of the planet’s surface.
May 26, 2021 at 11:02 am
Many planets in the Solar System have atmospheres, and their clouds bring much joy to the scientists studying them, including Mars.
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One Martian cloud in particular has caught the attention of astronomer Jorge Hernández-Bernal and his team: a previously unnoticed, extremely long cloud that forms downwind of the Arsia Mons volcano.
This ‘Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud’ (AMEC) appears to develop every morning during the spring and summer seasons. The Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/J. Cowart, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Before dawn, a circular head of cloud, around 125km across, emerges over the western flank of the mountain, which then after sunrise extends rapidly westwards with the prevailing winds – moving at over 600km/h.
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Every morning during the warmer months in the southern part of the Red Planet, an exceptionally long cloud appears over a Martian volcano. The cloud of water ice, which appears close to the Arsia Mons volcano, stretches out over a thousand kilometers before dissipating within hours of forming.
Oddly enough, the Arsia Mons is the only volcano in that area that possesses such an unusual cloud on a daily basis. And now, based on observations conducted by the Visual Monitoring Camera (also known as VMC and the “Mars Webcam”) on ESA’s Mars Express, researchers have been able to solve the mystery of the unusually long cloud.
Mars Express and the case of the large, mysterious Martian volcano cloud
April 21, 2021
Throughout the southern Martian hemisphere’s spring and summer seasons, a large, expansive cloud emerges daily from the volcano Arsia Mons. Why this cloud only forms at this location on Mars, what kind of cloud it is, and other puzzles to this phenomenon have plagued researchers for years as observing Martian weather usually only happens by accident during other investigations.
Now, a team of researchers primarily using the Mars Express orbiter from the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as data from past and present NASA and ISRO spacecraft have pieced together the mystery surrounding this cloud.