Spacecraft have been the real mapmakers of Mars since 1965. Telescopes could see caps and dust, and they also invented canals that were not there. Mariner 4 flew past in July 1965 and returned pictures of craters. The inhabited Mars of the storybooks did not survive that flyby.
What followed is a stack of orbiters, landers, and rovers from several nations. Two NASA rovers, Curiosity in Gale and Perseverance in Jezero, were still working as this sheet was written in September 2026.
A short chronology
The table is a spine, not a full catalog. Years are arrival or landing years unless noted. The instrument crosswalk is Mission instruments.
| Mission | Year | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| Mariner 4 | 1965 | First close pictures. Craters, no canals. |
| Mariner 9 | 1971 | First orbiter. Mapped the volcanoes and canyons after a global dust storm. |
| Viking 1 and 2 | 1976 | First successful landers, in Chryse and Utopia. Biology results stayed ambiguous. |
| Mars Pathfinder | 1997 | Landed with the small rover Sojourner. |
| Spirit and Opportunity | 2004 | Twin rovers. Opportunity lasted until a dust storm in 2018. |
| Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter | 2006 | The sharp-eyed orbiter behind many landing-site maps. |
| Phoenix | 2008 | Dug ice in the northern plains. |
| Curiosity | 2012 | Nuclear rover. Still driving in September 2026. |
| MAVEN | 2014 | Measured how the atmosphere escapes. Contact lost December 2025. |
| InSight | 2018 | Listened for marsquakes. Mission ended December 2022. |
| Perseverance and Ingenuity | 2021 | Sample-caching rover and a helicopter. Helicopter ended in January 2024 after 72 flights. |
| Hope and Tianwen-1 | 2021 | Emirates orbiter, and China's orbiter with the Zhurong rover. |
What is still on the surface
Curiosity marked 1 km of climb above its landing site on 26 August 2026, and it passed sol 5,000 at the end of that August. Perseverance has cached rock and atmosphere samples, including a backup set of 10 tubes left at Three Forks in early 2023, and more tubes that ride on the rover. [1] [2]
The plan to fetch those tubes was Mars Sample Return, a NASA and ESA campaign. Science reported on 5 August 2026 that the year's spending agreement does not support the existing program. The samples were still on Mars when this page was written. A later mission could still be designed. Nothing on this sheet should be read as a funeral for the rocks, only as the status of that program. [3]
Power, dust, and the ones that stopped
Solar panels and dust are a paired risk. Opportunity's last contact was 10 June 2018, during a planet-encircling storm. Spirit had already gone quiet in 2010 after getting stuck. InSight ended in December 2022 when dust on its panels cut the power. Nuclear generators let Curiosity and Perseverance ignore the worst of that failure. Storms are covered on Dust storms on Mars.
Zhurong, the Chinese rover in Utopia Planitia, landed in May 2021 and went quiet after a planned hibernation in May 2022. The next spacecraft aimed at the Mars system, as of this sheet, is JAXA's MMX, planned to launch toward Phobos on 20 October 2026.
See also
What links here
References
- NASA Science. Curiosity Reaches 1-Kilometer Elevation Gain. 26 August 2026. https://science.nasa.gov/mars/curiosity-reaches-1-kilometer-elevation-gain/
- NASA Science. Curiosity Postcard Celebrates Rover's 5,000th Day on Mars. 16 September 2026. https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/curiosity-postcard-celebrates-rovers-5000th-day-on-mars/
- Science. NASA's Mars Sample Return mission is dead. 5 August 2026. https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-return-mission-dead