* 1965 – The Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet.

* TMS-SD provides public outreach events to classrooms, libraries, museums and other organizations throughout the Southern California region with seven different multimedia programs: " Invasion from Earth-The Robotic Exploration of Mars "; " Mars Exploration Rovers-Year 4 "; " Mars on Earth-The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the Utah Desert "; " Mars on Earth-The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the Canadian Arctic: " Humans to Mars-How We'll Get There "; " A Close Look at Mars "; and " Mars in the Movies "

The Mars Oz design features a horizontal cylinder 4. 7 m in diameter and 18 m long, with a tapered nose.

rightMariner 3 and Mariner 4 were Mars flyby missions.

Its sister ship, Mariner 4, launched on November 28, 1964, was the first successful flyby of the planet Mars and gave the first glimpse of Mars at close range.

Mariner 4 ( together with Mariner 3 known as Mariner-Mars 1964 ) was the fourth in a series of spacecraft, launched on November 28, 1964, intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode and performed the first successful flyby of the planet Mars, returning the first pictures of the Martian surface.

Mariner 4 was designed to conduct closeup scientific observations of Mars and to transmit these observations to Earth.

The electrical power for the instruments and the radio transmitter of Mariner 4 was supplied by 28, 224 solar cells contained in the four 176 x 90 cm solar panels, which could provide 310 watts at the distance of Mars.

After the maneuver, Mariner 4 was on course for Mars as planned.

At 02: 19: 11 UT Mariner 4 passed behind Mars as seen from Earth and the radio signal ceased.

The images returned showed a Moon-like cratered terrain, which later missions showed was not typical for Mars, but only for the more ancient region imaged by Mariner 4.

Image: Mars ( Mariner 4 ). jpg | The first close-up image ever taken of Mars, this photo shows an area about 330 km across by 1200 km from limb to bottom of frame.

If there was life on Mars, after Mariner 4 most concluded it would probably be smaller, simpler forms.

Others concluded that a search for life on Earth at kilometer resolution, using several thousand photographs, did not reveal a sign of life on the vast majority of these photographs ; thus, based on the 22 photographs taken by Mariner 4, one could not conclude there was no intelligent life on Mars.

* Processed images and mosaics from the Mariner 4 mission to Mars

Before the Mariner 4 spacecraft arrived at Mars in July 1965 and dispelled some of the more exotic theories about the planet, the conventional image of Mars was shaped by the observations of the astronomers Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell.

sq: 4 Mars

For example Venus orbits about 5. 2 km / s faster than Earth and Mars orbits about 5. 7 km / s slower.

A spacecraft traveling from Earth to Mars via this method will arrive near Mars orbit in approximately 8. 5 months, but because the orbital velocity is greater when closer to the center of mass ( i. e. the Sun ) and slower when farther from the center, the spacecraft will be traveling quite slowly and a small application of thrust is all that is needed to put it into a circular obit around Mars.

* 1973 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.

* raised over $ 100, 000 for the Mars Society hosting a fundraiser banquet with James Cameron, May 5, 2001

The NASA model, referred to as the Design Reference Mission, on version 5. 0 as of September 1, 2012, calls for a significant upgrade in hardware ( at least 3 launches per mission, rather than two ), and sends the ERV to Mars fully fueled, parking it in orbit above the planet for subsequent rendezvous with the MAV.

sq: 5 Mars

* November 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 3, a U. S. space probe intended for Mars, is launched from Cape Kennedy but fails.

* August 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars ( 3, 524 kilometers ).

* July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, joining the United States and Russia as an outer space-exploring nation.

* 228 Gm — 1. 5 AU — Distance between Mars and the Sun

* Grissom Hill is 7. 5 km ( 4. 7 mi ) southwest of Columbia Memorial Station on Mars and is one of the Apollo 1 Hills.

Starting with two failures in 1969, the heavier Proton-K rocket was used to launch larger 5 tonne spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter and a lander to Mars.

Mars 2 released the descent module 4. 5 hours before reaching Mars on November 27, 1971.

The Mars 4 and Mars 5 orbiters, launched in 1973, were designed to orbit Mars and return information on the composition, structure, and properties of the Martian atmosphere and surface.

** Mars 5: July 25, 1973 at 18: 55: 48 UTC

Mars 5 reached Mars on February 12, 1974 at 15: 45 UT and was inserted into an elliptical 1755 by 32, 555 km, 24 h 53 min orbit with an inclination of 35. 3 degrees.

Mars 5 collected data for 22 orbits until a loss of pressurization in the transmitter housing ended the mission.

The planned Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 vehicles evolved into Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 of the Voyager program, while the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars orbiters were enlarged versions of the Mariner 9 spacecraft.

After orbiting Mars for more than a month and returning images used for landing site selection, the orbiters and landers detached ; the landers then entered the Martian atmosphere and soft-landed at the sites that had been chosen.

The primary objectives of the two Viking orbiters were to transport the landers to Mars, perform reconnaissance to locate and certify landing sites, act as communications relays for the landers, and to perform their own scientific investigations.

By discovering many geological forms that are typically formed from large amounts of water, the images from the orbiters caused a revolution in our ideas about water on Mars.

The spacecraft were intended to explore Mars, and included flyby probes, landers and orbiters.

The orbiters ' primary scientific objectives were to image the Martian surface and clouds, determine the temperature on Mars, study the topography, composition and physical properties of the surface, measure properties of the atmosphere, monitor the solar wind and the interplanetary and Martian magnetic fields, and act as communications relays to send signals from the landers to Earth.

The Mars 2 and 3 orbiters sent back a large volume of data covering the period from December 1971 to March 1972, although transmissions continued through August.

Dust devils also occur on Mars ( see Dust Devil Tracks ) and were first photographed by the Viking orbiters in the 1970s.

Additional studies of the solar wind were evidently coordinated with those performed by the Mars 2 and 3 orbiters and Veneras 7 and 8.

The Mars 2 was an unmanned space probe of the Mars program, a series of unmanned Mars landers and orbiters launched by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s.

Unable to reprogram the mission computers, both Mars 2 and Mars 3 dispatched their landers immediately, and the orbiters used up a significant portion of their available data resources in snapping images of the featureless dust clouds below, rather than the surface mapping intended.

Unable to reprogram the mission computers, both Mars 2 and Mars 3 dispatched their landers immediately, and the orbiters used up a significant portion of their available data resources in snapping images of the featureless dust clouds below, rather than the surface mapping intended.

* Mars probe program — USSR orbiters and landers

* The sedimentary rocks of Sinus Meridiani: Five key observations from data acquired by the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters