Life on Mars If the surface life has been reanimated as recently as 450,000 years ago, then rovers on Mars could find dormant but still viable life at a depth of one meter below the surface, according to an estimate. In 1965, the Mariner 4 probe discovered that Mars had no global magnetic field that would protect the planet from potentially life-threatening cosmic radiation and solar radiation; observations made in the late 1990s by the Mars Global Surveyor confirmed this discovery. Scientists speculate that the lack of magnetic shielding helped the solar wind blow away much of Mars's atmosphere over the course of
Space probe (first weather balloons deployed on another planet) at Venus before their rendezvous with Halley's Comet. This Japanese probe was the first non-US, non-Soviet interplanetary probe. A second Japanese probe, it made ultraviolet wavelength observations of the comet. The first space probe to penetrate a comet's coma and take close-up images of its nucleus. First solar wind sample return probe from sun-earth L1. First sample return probe from a comet tail. First probe to land on an asteroid. First sample return probe to launch from an asteroid. The Rosetta space probe flew by two asteroids and made a rendezvous and orbited