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
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