Life on Mars life were found. Mariner 4 probe performed the first successful flyby of the planet Mars, returning the first pictures of the Martian surface in 1965. The photographs showed an arid Mars without rivers, oceans, or any signs of life. Further, it revealed that the surface (at least the parts that it photographed) was covered in craters, indicating a lack of plate tectonics and weathering of any kind for the last 4 billion years. The probe also found that Mars has no global magnetic field that would protect the planet from potentially life-threatening cosmic rays. The probe was able to calculate
Space probe Transport Network. First man-made object to soft land on the Moon, or any other extra terrestrial surface. First mission to photograph the far side of the Moon, launched in 1959. First robotic sample return probe from the Moon. First rover on Moon. It was sent to the Moon on November 10, 1970. First probe to Mercury. First successful in-place analysis of another planet. It may have also been the first space probe to impact the surface of another planet, although it is unclear whether it reached Venus' surface. The Venera 7 probe was the first spacecraft to successfully soft land