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
Mars Express at 19:14 UT to put the spacecraft into a Mars transfer orbit. The Fregat and "Mars Express" separated at approximately 19:17 UT. The solar panels were then deployed and a trajectory correction manoeuvre was performed on June 4 to aim "Mars Express" towards Mars and allow the Fregat booster to coast into interplanetary space. The "Mars Express" was the first Russian-launched probe to successfully make it out of low Earth orbit since the Soviet Union fell. The Near Earth commissioning phase extended from the separation of the spacecraft from the launcher upper stage until the completion of the initial check