Mars Appears To Be Where Probes Go To Die

Another intriguing aspect of Mars is its amazing capacity to outperform the most advanced engineering that humanity has to offer. More than 50 missions have been sent to the Red Planet by different countries since 1960, but only approximately half of them have made it there safely.

The Soviet Union's 1M, also known as Marsnik 1 in the western media, was the first mission intended to reach Mars and it failed to launch in 1960. NASA's Mariner 4 completed the first successful flyby of Mars on July 14–15, 1965, and sent back images. About 55 probes have been launched or attempted to launch to Mars since then. Among these, many of the early Soviet Union attempts met with launch failures, and a number of additional attempts met with some sort of technical setback en route, in orbit, or on the planet's surface. This might have been partially caused by the nature of the operations and the rush to arrive with unprepared equipment.

The most recent initiatives have had better results. The Phoenix Lander in 2008, the MAVEN orbiter launched in 2013, the resourceful and tenacious Opportunity rover from 2014 to 2018, and the Curiosity rover all saw success for NASA (launched in 2011). More recent missions had also reached Mars, including the United States Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, the United Arab Emirates Hope orbiter (the nation's first interplanetary mission), and China's Tianwen-1 orbiter and lander-rover mission, which was the country's first successful mission to Mars.

Any "curse" that could have been afflicting the planet appears to have been more of a byproduct of the incredibly challenging journey there. However, the intention to launch a colony by 2050 may present some competition for Elon Musk and SpaceX