Mission feasible: 50 years ago, a Soviet spacecraft made the world's first soft landing on Mars
2021-12-02T15:52:13.875Z
On December 2, 1971, the descent vehicle of the Soviet automatic interplanetary station "Mars-3" made the world's first soft landing on the surface of the Red Planet. The Mars-3 station was launched in May from the Baikonur cosmodrome by the Proton-K launch vehicle. The flight lasted more than six months. Despite the fact that a dust storm was raging on the planet at the time the station arrived at Mars, the device landed on the bottom of the Ptolemy crater. The station was equipped with instruments for measuring the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, mass spectrometric determination of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, as well as measuring a number of other parameters of the Red Planet. In addition, Mars-3 carried equipment for a joint experiment between the USSR and France to study solar radio emission.
Source: russiart