It didn't. Another Soviet spacecraft was launched
toward Mars in 1962.
And this one made it into Earth's orbit.
It made it out of Earth's orbit, and remember as we've said, once you make it
out of Earth's orbit, that's actually where the easy part commences.
So, it's on its way to Mars.
It's on its coast phase to Mars, radioing back to the Earth every once in a while,
and radio communications were lost.
The assumption being that somehow the spacecraft got pointed in the wrong
direction, and can no longer communicate with the Earth.
If it was on the right trajectory though, it did actually fly by Mars,
or maybe even hit Mars we'll never know.
Just for a complete list, the Soviet Union tried again in 1964 with two probes,
both lost.
Tried again in 1969 with two probes, both lost.
So, okay, I said it's relatively easy to get there.
A lot of these losses occurred in the part where you're going through the atmosphere,
the hard part of it.
And the other parts were, well yes, it is easy to get to Mars, but
it is actually kind of hard to have your spacecraft still be alive and
talking to you when it gets there.
Many of these spacecraft, again, probably did actually make it to Mars.
In 1964, when the Soviets had sent two failed missions to Mars,
the United States also attempted their first missions to Mars.
They did the same approach, send two identical things, hope that one works.
The first one failed.
It failed when the shroud that protects the spacecraft as it's going up on
the first rocket failed to open.
Spacecraft never came alive.
Fell back down in the ocean.
Dead.
The second one made it.
Mariner IV was the first spacecraft to fly past Mars, and
it flew past Mars on July 14, 1965.
It had, by today's standards, some pretty primitive instruments.
It had basically a television camera that it transmitted very,
very slowly back to the Earth.
But, it allowed the first images of a planet other than the Earth,
to be seen up close.
Here's what some of them looked like.
Okay, there it is.
This is the first image ever returned from another planet.
And, okay yeah,
it's really kind of crummy, because we're used to really fabulous things these days.
But, just imagine, this is, you're suddenly looking at Mars, this thing that,
for the entire history of the universe, had only been a little red dot in the sky.
And then,
a slightly larger object that you could vaguely make out surface features on.
And now, it's a real body.
You can see it's got a real size, a real shape.
You can't really see anything on the surface on this very,
very first image that came out.
You can, though, see the atmosphere.
This, this stuff you see over here is actually
the atmosphere of Mars that you're actually seeing.
The rest of it is just the surface.
There were only a few images that got transmitted back,
the spacecraft went zipping on by and the transmissions were so
slow that it only had time to send back a few.
Let me show you a couple of the other ones.
Here are two of the highest resolution images that were obtained, and
when you look at them, they look a little bit familiar.
Mike BrownProfessor
