Phobos (moon) energy due to wind blowing dust off of its solar panels, took several short-exposure photographs of the night sky from the surface of Mars. Phobos and Deimos are both clearly visible in the photograph. The Soviet Union undertook the Phobos program with two probes, both launched successfully in July 1988. "Phobos 1" was accidentally shut down by an erroneous command from ground control issued in September 1988 and lost while the craft was still en route. "Phobos 2" arrived at the Mars system in January 1989 and, after transmitting a small amount of data and imagery but shortly before beginning
Exploration of Mars space probe to orbit another planet when it entered into orbit around Mars. The amount of data returned by probes increased dramatically as technology improved. The first to contact the surface were two Soviet probes: Mars 2 lander on November 27 and Mars 3 lander on December 2, 1971Mars 2 failed during descent and Mars 3 about twenty seconds after the first Martian soft landing. Mars 6 failed during descent but did return some corrupted atmospheric data in 1974. The Soviet probes Phobos 1 and 2 were sent to Mars in 1988 to study Mars and its two moons, with