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Meet the Very First Rover To Land On Mars
toygeek writes "Before Curiosity, before Opportunity, before Spirit, and before Sojourner, the very first robot to land on Mars was this little guy, way back in December of 1971. Called PrOP-M, the rover was part of the Soviet Union's Mars-3 mission, which had the potential to deploy the first ever mobile scientific instruments onto the Martian surface. Article also contains Russian video on early rovers."
The landers were not designed to "park" in orbit and had to land on a fixed schedule. Even if the dust storm was detected, nothing could be done. (US Mariner 9 orbiter arrived around the same time and had to wait months for that storm to clear before the surface was visible.)
Speculation is that once landed, dust storms tugged at the still-attached parachutes and yanked the Soviet landers over. This would explain the very short communication spans after landing.
Another speculation at the time was that they sank into quick-sand or quick-dust of some sort. Viking took that theory in hand and was designed to send back an image as soon as possible so that we could at least have one look. Viking's first image was of one of its footpads so if it was sinking, scientists could see the soil level above it in the (potentially final) image.
Vikings also had the ability to park in orbit so that the orbiters could check things out first. Whether this was done to avoid the fate of the Soviet landers or not, I can't say.
It paid off in that the original Viking 1 landing spot was discovered to be too risky using the orbiters' improved cameras. The planned Bicentennial (7/4/1976) landing was postponed because of it as a smoother spot was sought.
Table-ized A.I.
You've got to remember that here we are 40 years later and the Russians have yet to land a man on the Moon.
You make it sound as though it has been a Russian initiative for 50 years to land a cosmonaut on the Moon, but it only was so from 1961-1974. After 74, there was no such initiative for a manned lunar landing, so here we are 40 years later and for the last 38 of them the Russian's haven't been trying. You'd be just as correct to say that for the last 40 years the US had been unable to land a man on the Moon. So let's not overplay Russian space failures and US successes... (after all, the US has killed far more astronauts with its program than the Russians). Instead let's celebrate the successful cooperation the US and Russians have had in space.
Yeah, those rough edges surely impeded the Soviet progam...
1957: First satellite, Sputnik 1
1957: First animal to enter Earth orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2
1959: First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit, first man-made object to escape Earth's orbit, Luna 1
1959: First data communications, or telemetry, to and from outer space, Luna 1.
1959: First man-made object to pass near the Moon, first artificial satellite in Solar orbit, Luna 1
1959: First probe to impact the Moon, Luna 2
1959: First images of the moon's far side, Luna 3
1960: First animals to safely return from Earth orbit, the dogs Belka and Strelka on Sputnik 5.
1960: First probe launched to Mars, Marsnik 1 (failed to reach target)
1961: First probe launched to Venus, Venera 1
1961: First person in space (International definition) and in Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Vostok programme
1961: First person to spend over a day in space Gherman Titov, Vostok 2 (also first person to sleep in space).
1962: First dual crewed spaceflight, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4
1963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6
1964: First multi-person crew (3), Voskhod 1
1965: First EVA, by Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 2
1965: First probe to hit another planet (Venus), Venera 3
1966: First probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the moon, Luna 9
1966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 10
1967: First automated, crewless rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188. (Until 2006, this had remained the only major space achievement that the US had not duplicated.)
1969: First docking between two crewed crafts in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5