The first successful fly-by of Mars was on July 14--15, 1965, by NASA's Mariner 4. On November 14, 1971 Mariner 9 became the first space probe to orbit another planet when it entered into orbit around Mars.The first objects to successfully land on the surface were two Soviet probes: Mars 2 on November 27 and Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, but both ceased communicating within seconds of landing. The 1975 NASA launches of the Viking program consisted of two orbiters, each having a lander; both landers successfully touched down in 1976. Viking 1 remained operational for six years, Viking 2 for three. The Viking landers relayed color panoramas of Mars and the orbiters mapped the surface so well that the images remain in use.

The Soviet probes Phobos 1 and 2 were sent to Mars in 1988 to study Mars and its two moons. Phobos 1 lost contact on the way to Mars. Phobos 2, while successfully photographing Mars and Phobos, failed just before it was set to release two landers to the surface of Phobos.

Following the 1992 failure of the Mars Observer orbiter, the NASA Mars Global Surveyor achieved Mars orbit in 1997. This mission was a complete success, having finished its primary mapping mission in early 2001. Contact was lost with the probe in November 2006 during its third extended program, spending exactly 10 operational years in space. The NASA Mars Pathfinder, carrying a robotic exploration vehicle Sojourner, landed in the Ares Vallis on Mars in the summer of 1997, returning many images.

The NASA Phoenix Mars lander arrived on the north polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008. Its robotic arm was used to dig into the Martian soil and the presence of water ice was confirmed on June 20. The mission concluded on November 10, 2008 after contact was lost.

The Dawn spacecraft flew by Mars in February 2009 for a gravity assist on its way to investigate Vesta and then Ceres.

Spirit Rover (MER-A) was active from 2004 until 2010, when it stopped sending data.

The Mars Express mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) reached Mars in 2003. It carried the Beagle 2 lander, which failed during descent and was declared lost in February, 2004. In early 2004 the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer team announced the orbiter had detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. ESA announced in June 2006 the discovery of aurorae on Mars.

In January 2004, the NASA twin Mars Exploration Rovers named Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B) landed on the surface of Mars. Both have met or exceeded all their targets. Among the most significant scientific returns has been conclusive evidence that liquid water existed at some time in the past at both landing sites. Martian dust devils and windstorms have occasionally cleaned both rovers' solar panels, and thus increased their lifespan.

On March 10, 2006, the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe arrived in orbit to conduct a two-year science survey. The orbiter will map the Martian terrain and weather to find suitable landing sites for upcoming lander missions. The MRO snapped the first image of a series of active avalanches near the planet's north pole, scientists said March 3, 2008.

The joint Russian and Chinese Phobos-Grunt mission to return samples of the Martian moon, Phobos, launched in 2011. The spacecraft missed its opportunity to enter an orbit that would bring it to Mars, so it has failed its planned mission.

The Finnish-Russian MetNet, is mission concept where multiple small vehicles on Mars to establish a widespread observation network to investigate the planet's atmospheric structure, physics and meteorology. MetNet was considered for a piggyback launch on the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, but not selected.

The first successful fly-by of Mars was on July 14--15, 1965, by NASA's Mariner 4. On November 14, 1971 Mariner 9 became the first space probe to orbit another planet when it entered into orbit around Mars.The first objects to successfully land on the surface were two Soviet probes: Mars 2 on November 27 and Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, but both ceased communicating within seconds of landing. The 1975 NASA launches of the Viking program consisted of two orbiters, each having a lander; both landers successfully touched down in 1976. Viking 1 remained operational for six years, Viking 2 for three. The Viking landers relayed color panoramas of Mars and the orbiters mapped the surface so well that the images remain in use.

The Soviet probes Phobos 1 and 2 were sent to Mars in 1988 to study Mars and its two moons. Phobos 1 lost contact on the way to Mars. Phobos 2, while successfully photographing Mars and Phobos, failed just before it was set to release two landers to the surface of Phobos.

Following the 1992 failure of the Mars Observer orbiter, the NASA Mars Global Surveyor achieved Mars orbit in 1997. This mission was a complete success, having finished its primary mapping mission in early 2001. Contact was lost with the probe in November 2006 during its third extended program, spending exactly 10 operational years in space. The NASA Mars Pathfinder, carrying a robotic exploration vehicle Sojourner, landed in the Ares Vallis on Mars in the summer of 1997, returning many images.

The NASA Phoenix Mars lander arrived on the north polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008. Its robotic arm was used to dig into the Martian soil and the presence of water ice was confirmed on June 20. The mission concluded on November 10, 2008 after contact was lost.

The Dawn spacecraft flew by Mars in February 2009 for a gravity assist on its way to investigate Vesta and then Ceres.

Spirit Rover (MER-A) was active from 2004 until 2010, when it stopped sending data.

The Mars Express mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) reached Mars in 2003. It carried the Beagle 2 lander, which failed during descent and was declared lost in February, 2004. In early 2004 the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer team announced the orbiter had detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. ESA announced in June 2006 the discovery of aurorae on Mars.

In January 2004, the NASA twin Mars Exploration Rovers named Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B) landed on the surface of Mars. Both have met or exceeded all their targets. Among the most significant scientific returns has been conclusive evidence that liquid water existed at some time in the past at both landing sites. Martian dust devils and windstorms have occasionally cleaned both rovers' solar panels, and thus increased their lifespan.

On March 10, 2006, the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe arrived in orbit to conduct a two-year science survey. The orbiter will map the Martian terrain and weather to find suitable landing sites for upcoming lander missions. The MRO snapped the first image of a series of active avalanches near the planet's north pole, scientists said March 3, 2008.

The joint Russian and Chinese Phobos-Grunt mission to return samples of the Martian moon, Phobos, launched in 2011. The spacecraft missed its opportunity to enter an orbit that would bring it to Mars, so it has failed its planned mission.

The Finnish-Russian MetNet, is mission concept where multiple small vehicles on Mars to establish a widespread observation network to investigate the planet's atmospheric structure, physics and meteorology. MetNet was considered for a piggyback launch on the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, but not selected.

As for the existence of intelligent life on Mars now or in the past, there has never been any evidence that could support that conclusion. The same goes for other bodies in our solar system other than our own planet. Advanced life forms as we know them require liquid water. Since the mid 1960's, we've known about the presence of frozen water at the Martian poles. The presence of liquid water on Mars, however, has never been proven. Until liquid water is found on the Red Planet (hint - the place to look would be at receding glacier melts in solar system bodies), the odds of any life forms or microbes abiding on Mars is extremely remote.

In recent years, NASA Rover robots on Mars (Mars Pathfinder, the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers and the Phoenix Mars Lander) coupled with data from Mars orbiters proved the previous existence of liquid water on Mars billions of years ago, thus raising the spectre that life had once arisen on Mars during the early solar system and perhaps died out. Billions of years ago, Mars was a hot planet harboring shallow salty seas. The hematites (dubbed 'blueberries') discovered by the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers are a remnant of those early seas. A new study of a system of gullies on the surface of Mars recently published in the March 2009 issue of the journal Geology, appears to indicate that the most recent period of water flow on the Red Planet was only 1.25 million years ago. That gully system was located on the inside of a crater in Promethei Terra, observed in close-up images taken by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera. If that interpretation of those images is correct, it may mean that Mars goes through warming and cooling cycles and that some liquid water may flow during warmup.

The Phoenix Lander, which studied Mars for some months after its landing on May 25, 2008, conducted various experiments testing the Martian soils at that site. Phoenix conducted wet chemical analysis through its Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer or MECA, which mixes the soil sample with water and bakes the mud to 1832°F to test for chemical composition. The results show the martian soil had a pH between 8 and 9, meaning it is alkaline -- the kind of soil you could grow vegetables in if you brought it back to Earth, tossed in some cow manure and watered it regularly. MECA detected the presence of magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride but no carbon, the crucial ingredient necessary for life on Earth. Interestingly, JPL tells us that the mineral content of the soil is not much different from the upper dry valleys in Antarctica. What Phoenix' wet chemical analysis strongly suggests, however, is that there was no life in the soil sample tested by MECA. The Phoenix Lander's follow-the-water strategy for searching for organic compounds is, to be sure, exactly the right strategy for NASA to pursue. The European ExoMars rover will drill down 2 meters into the surface for its tests. Missions to Enceladus or Titan (or elsewhere in the solar system where liquid water might be found), may similarly find no trace of lifeforms. Even on Earth, however, simple organisms have survived once removed from a source of water. The existence of Earth-like life should necessarily be restricted to planets where Earth conditions exist or have existed. No evidence of life on Mars, or on any other body in the solar system other than Earth, has been uncovered. The quest for other life, of course, does not stop at the edge of our solar system. Astronomers are eagerly searching for exoplanets outside of our sun's orb. The Hubble Team has recently discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of HD 189733b, a Jupiter-like gas giant exoplanet. Previous observations of HD 189733b by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope also detected water vapor and methane on that planet. But, by itself, these discoveries are not chemical proof of extraterrestrial life. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is not unexpected. Earth's early atmosphere consisted largely of out-gassing of volcanoes: H2O, CO2, SO2, CO, S2, Cl2, N2, H2 and NH3 and CH4 -- not a particularly attractive brew for the emergence of life on our planet three billion years ago. But it seems to have been enough. The apparent fact that there is no life on Mars, however, does not entail that there is not life elsewhere in the cosmos. In early March 2009, NASA successfully launched the Kepler Mission into an orbit around the sun. This spacecraft will search for Earth-size rocky planets outside of our solar system in habitable zones orbiting stars at a distance where liquid water might potentially be found. Kepler will focus on the star-rich area of the sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Over the next six years it will measure variations in the brightness of more than 100,000 stars, searching for slight periodic dimming in a star's light output that may evidence an orbiting planet. ------- The suspicion of life on Mars was supported by the stream beds (water and lava), and frozen water ice at the poles. So there might be CO2 or hydrogen or nitrogen and other gases there as well.

There's life there, but not native to Mars. NASA sent up a car to Mars to take some pictures. There's some bacteria that made it through the sterilization process. So that's the life. It survives on grease in the machine. The grease never gets quite cold enough to kill the bacteria riding in it; however, it's cold enough that their life processes are rather slowed down.