The Race to Mars: The History of the American and Soviet Attempts to Land on the Red Planet

In 1960, when Eisenhower’s administration began planning and funding for the famous Apollo program that would land the first men on the Moon in 1969, the Soviet Union was already thinking further ahead, literally. In one of the worst kept secrets of the Space Race, the Soviet Union launched two probes, Korabl 4 and Korabl 5, toward Mars in October 1960. Meanwhile, throughout the 1960s, NASA would spend tens of billions on missions to the Moon, the most expensive peacetime program in American history to that point, and Apollo was only made possible by the tests conducted through earlier missions, including the historic Ranger Program.

When the Soviet Union attempted to launch probes to Mars in 1960, the goals were considerably less ambitious than saying hello to little green men. Those first two probes were intended merely to fly by Mars and transmit photos of the planet. In addition to getting closer looks at the Red Planet than ever before, the true value of those 1960 missions was the propaganda victory the Soviets hoped to score, obtaining yet another notch in their Space Race belt. Though the Soviets’ missions failed that year, they were still years ahead of the United States.

In November 1971, NASA’s Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to enter Mars’ orbit, but the Soviets’ Mars 2 and Mars 3 spacecrafts were hot on its heels. Mariner 9 was designed to orbit around Mars, but the Soviets’ spacecrafts had descent modules designed to actually land on the Red Planet’s surface. The descent module aboard Mars 2 crash landed on Mars’ surface on November 27, but less than a week later, Mars 3’s descent module began its historic descent down to the surface. On December 2, 1971, after a few hours of descending, it successfully completed its “soft landing.”

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