Failures of Robotic Exploration to Mars

Mars is known has a reputation to be the “spacecraft cemetery” because lots of robotic missions to the Red Planet have been lost. Actually, an overwhelming 60 percent (26 of 43) of the probes launched by all space exploration nations to explore Mars have failed. NASA’s results are not far from these either: without taking into consideration the Mars Science Laboratory, which is on the way to Mars and hopefully will succeed, NASA launched 19 missions to the Red Planet, of which seven probes were lost: Mariner 3, Mariner 8, Mars Observer, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and the two Deep Space 2 Probes. [1] What is going on?

Mariner 3, launched in 1964, did not make it to Mars because the shroud on top of the rocket where the probe was located did not open properly, and the solar panels did not open, so the spacecraft ended up orbiting the sun uselessly. [2] Mariner 8 failed during launch in 1971. [3] While the Mars Observer was successfully launched in 1992 and traveled all the way to Mars for 337 days, the contact with the probe was lost in 1993 just when it was about to enter orbit. [4] The Mars Climate Orbiter was launched in 1998 to function as a weather satellite in orbit around Mars, but it was also lost when it arrived to the Red Planet one year later, in 1999. [5] The Mars Polar Lander had as mission to land to the Martian South Pole. Launched in the beginning of 1999 together with the two Deep Space 2 probes, the entire missions with 3 probes on board was lost, again at their arrival to the Red Planet, at the end of 1999. [6]

Is there a Mars curse going on? One reason more probes are lost to Mars than any other celestial body is that more missions were launched to explore the Red Planet than any other body in the solar system. But there is also human error. Such an error occurred during inserting the Mars Climate Orbiter into orbit: because of a navigational error, the satellite occupied an orbit 100 kilometers lower than it was initially intended. The error was performed by NASA’s subcontractors, Lockheed Martin simply because they were not using the standard metric system, which in turn led to serious calculation errors. [7]

It is also important to notice that most failures have occurred in the early years of space exploration, and each of them helped improve the next mission. I would rather give some credit to the Red Planet than blame it for those missions that did not make it, by labeling such results as being a consequence of a Mars curse. It may also seem not to be the right approach to look into failures rather than successes, but I am a firm believer that we learn from the failed missions much more than we learn from the successful ones. Sending robotic explorers to Mars is a complex business, and the recently extremely successful missions to the Red Planet owe a lot to those that did not make it.

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Notes:
[1] National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mars Exploration Program: Historical Log. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/log/ (accessed December 5, 2011), p. 1.

[2] NASA. Mars: NASA Explores the Red Planet, Mariner 3 and 4. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/mariner3-4-index.html (accessed December 5, 2011), para. 2.

[3] NASA. Mars: NASA Explores the Red Planet, Mariner 8 and 9. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/mariner8-9-index.html (accessed December 5, 2011), para. 2.

[4] NASA. Mars: NASA Explores the Red Planet. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/index-past.html (accessed December 5, 2011).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] O'Neill, Ian. The “Mars Curse”: Why Have So Many Missions Failed? Universe Today, March 22, 2008. http://www.universetoday.com/13267/the-mars-curse-why-have-so-many-missions-failed/ (accessed December 5, 2011), para. 9.

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References

NASA. Mars: NASA Explores the Red Planet. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/index-past.html (accessed December 5, 2011).

NASA. Mars: NASA Explores the Red Planet, Mariner 3 and 4. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/mariner3-4-index.html (accessed December 5, 2011).

NASA. Mars: NASA Explores the Red Planet, Mariner 8 and 9. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/mariner8-9-index.html (accessed December 5, 2011).

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mars Exploration Program: Historical Log. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/log/ (accessed December 5, 2011).

O'Neill, Ian. The “Mars Curse”: Why Have So Many Missions Failed? Universe Today, March 22, 2008. http://www.universetoday.com/13267/the-mars-curse-why-have-so-many-missions-failed/ (accessed December 5, 2011).