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The history of Mars observation is about the recorded history of observation of the planet Mars. Some of the early records of Mars' observation date back to the era of the ancient Egyptian astronomers in the 2nd millennium BCE. Chinese records about the motions of Mars appeared before the founding of the Zhou dynasty (1045 BCE).
The relatively flat plains in northern parts of Mars strongly contrast with the cratered terrain in southern highlands – this terrain observation is known as the Martian dichotomy. Mars hosts many enormous extinct volcanoes (the tallest is Olympus Mons , 21.9 km or 13.6 mi tall) and one of the largest canyons in the Solar System ( Valles ...
Mars 1962A was a Mars flyby mission, launched on October 24, 1962, and Mars 1962B an intended first Mars lander mission, launched in late December of the same year (1962). Both failed from either breaking up as they were going into Earth orbit or having the upper stage explode in orbit during the burn to put the spacecraft into trans-Mars ...
An 1877 map of Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli. North is at the top of this map. In most maps of Mars drawn before space exploration the convention among astronomers was to put south at the top because the telescopic image of a planet is inverted. The first detailed observations of Mars were from ground-based telescopes.
Artist's Concept of Rover on Mars (credit: Maas Digital LLC) NASA's 2003 Mars Exploration Rover Mission has amassed an enormous amount of scientific information related to the Martian geology and atmosphere, as well as providing some astronomical observations from Mars.
Mars has an axial tilt of 25.19°, quite close to the value of 23.44° for Earth, and thus Mars has seasons of spring, summer, autumn, winter as Earth does.As on Earth, the southern and northern hemispheres have summer and winter at opposing times.
The Mars Observer spacecraft, also known as the Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter, was a robotic space probe launched by NASA on September 25, 1992, ...
Many missions to Mars have also included dedicated observations of the moons, while this section is about missions focused solely on them. There have been three unsuccessful dedicated missions and many proposals. Because of the proximity of the Mars moons to Mars, any mission to them may also be considered a mission to Mars from some perspectives.