Mars in fiction the past; Mars is a setting rather than a goal. Mariner 4 in July 1965 found that Mars—contrary to expectations—is heavily cratered, with a very thin atmosphere. No canals were found; while scientists did not believe that Mars was a moist planet, the lack of surface water surprised them. Science fiction had so influenced real explorations of the planet, however—Carl Sagan was among the many fans who became scientists—that after Mariner 9 in 1971-1972, craters were named after Wells, Burroughs, and other authors. The Mariner and Viking space probes confirmed that the Martian environment is extremely hostile to life. By
Human mission to Mars were for a launch sometime between 2016 and 2020. The Mars probe would carry a crew of four to five cosmonauts, who would spend close to two years in space. In late 2011, Russian and European space agencies successfully completed the ground-based MARS-500. The biomedical experiment simulating crewed flight to Mars was completed in Russia in July 2000. In 2011, Jean-Marc Salotti published a new proposal for a crewed Mars mission, with a release in 2012. The 2-4-2 concept is based on a reduction of the crew size to only 2 astronauts and the duplication of the entire mission. There