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THE EGYPTIANS
first to notice that the sun moves relative to the stars. They called mars "the red one" -
Jan 2, 1550
Tycho Brahe
The Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe made surprisingly accurate calculations of the position of Mars 200 years before the telescope was invented,using his naked eye. -
Galileo
observes Mars with a telescope, becoming the first person to use it for astronomical purposes. -
Galileo
observes Mars and determines that the rotational period, or length of one Mars day is 24h, 40m. -
polar caps
Huygens is the first to notice a white spot at the south pole, probably the southern polar cap. -
extraterrestrial life
Huygens publishes Cosmotheros, which discusses what is required of a planet to support life, and speculates about intelligent extraterrestrials. This is one of the first published expositions of extraterrestrial life. -
Giancomo Mirald
observes "white spots" at the poles, and discovers that the southern cap is not centered on the rotational pole. -
giancomo mirald
wonders (correctly) if the "white spots" are ice caps. -
dust clouds
Honore Flaugergues, a French amateur astronomer, notices "yellow clouds" on the surface of Mars, which were later found to be dust clouds. -
Life on mars
William Whewell concludes that Mars has green seas and red land, and wonders if there is extraterrestrial life. -
A day on mars
Frederik Kaiser calculated the rotational period of Mars to be 24 hours, 37 minutes, 22.62 seconds -
Marsnik 1 Launch
Solviet union tried to send a flyby rocket to space, but failed -
Marsnik 2 Launch
soviet union, tried to send a flyby rocket to mars, but launch failed once again. -
Mariner 3
Mariner 3 was launched on November 5, 1964, but the shroud encasing the spacecraft atop its rocket failed to open properly, and Mariner 3 did not get to Mars. -
Mariner 4
Three weeks later, on November 28, 1964, Mariner 4 was launched successfully on an eight-month voyage to the red planet. -
Mars pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder was originally designed as a technology demonstration of a way to deliver an instrumented lander and a free-ranging robotic rover to the surface of the red planet. Pathfinder not only accomplished this goal but also returned an unprecedented amount of data and outlived its primary design life -
2001 Mars Odyssey
Still in orbit around Mars, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft has collected more than 130,000 images and continues to send information to Earth about Martian geology, climate, and mineralogy. -
Exploring Mars from the Air
In the future NASA hopes to be able to explore mars on air
