What was the first spacecraft to land on Mars?
Exploration of Mars
The first to contact the surface were two Soviet probes: Mars 2 lander on November 27 and Mars 3 lander on December 2, 1971—Mars 2 failed during descent and Mars 3 about twenty seconds after the first Martian soft landing.[16] Mars 6 failed during descent but did return some corrupted atmospheric data in 1974. [17] The 1975 NASA launches of the Viking program consisted of two orbiters, each with a lander that successfully soft landed in 1976. Viking 1 remained operational for six years, Viking 2 for three. The Viking landers relayed the first color panoramas of Mars.[18]
Comparison of Asian national space programs
After successful achievement of geostationary technology, India's ISRO launched its first Moon mission, Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008, which discovered ice water on the Moon. India then launched on 5 November 2013 its maiden interplanetary mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission. The primary objective is to determine Mars' atmospheric composition and attempt to detect methane. The spacecraft completed its journey on 24 September 2014 when it entered its intended orbit around Mars, making India the first Asian country to successfully place a Mars orbiter and the only country in history to do so in the first attempt. ISRO became the fourth space agency in the world to send a spacecraft to Mars, only behind NASA, ROSCOSMOS, and ESA.