Launched in late November 1964, Mariner 4 performed the first successful flyby of Mars. Mariner 4 captured images as close as 7,400 miles. These photos only depicted a small portion of the Martian surface and reveal Mars as desolate and lunar-like. No canals were found. The success of Mariner 4 ironically resulted in the constriction of funds, because there were no signs of life to be found and the photographs misrepresented the Martian surface as Lunar. The results were relatively boring to the government.
Although the take-off of the Viking probes would be postponed due being shortchanged, the identical probes Mariner 6&7 launched within a few weeks of each other in the spring of 1969 as scheduled. The instruments on these probes were more sophisticated than Mariner 4’s. In addition, these probes orbited Mars. These probes also were much closer than Mariner 4’s; at one point they were only 2,000 miles away. Despite missing the giant volcanoes of the north and the Valles Marineris (a canyon that would stretch across the United States), several images taken of the Martian topography evoked analogy between it and Earth’s terrain.
Right after its twin Mariner 8 left Earth and failed, Mariner 9 took off in May of 1971. It more than made up for its lost sibling. Although massive dust storm that pervaded over Mars for much of the time it circumvented Mars, the photos that it sent back stunned scientists and rekindled interest in Mars. Mariner 9 not only caught the massive Valles Marineris and the gigantic shield volcanoes, it also found dry channel beds, outflow channels, small “islands” and many other features. These provided evidence that Mars’ geological history included volcanism, wind erosion, and water flow. These photographs sparked an unprecedented amount of speculation of Mars’ past.
The Soviet space programme also sent a few probes to Mars, but the vast majority of these attempts ended in failure. Identical probes Mars 2 and Mars 3 experienced mixed success. They were attempts to take pictures in orbit and to land rovers onto Mars to collect data. After taking off around the same time that Mariner 9 did, both made it to Mars. Mars 2 crashed and Mars 3’s rover (the first to safely land on Mars) treaded upon the landscape for 14 seconds. The pictures taken in orbit amounted to 60, which pales in comparison to the thousands of images captured by each of the Mariner probes. From this point on, the SSP started to lag behind NASA in Martian exploration, and science fiction authors were inspired only by NASA’s ventures.
Viking 1 and 2 consisted of both an orbiter and a lander. After launching in August of 1975, the orbiters relayed photos to Earth without obscured vision, while the landers took pictures and ran experiments to test the existence of life. Although no signs of life were found, some scientists argue that the experiments were terra-centric and that the results were ambiguous anyway. Nevertheless, Viking 1 and 2 captured Mars in very high detail and to many people, Mars was frighteningly terrestrial.
