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
Climate of Mars have once had a much thicker and warmer atmosphere, and oceans and/or lakes may have been present. It has, however, proven extremely difficult to construct convincing global climate models for Mars which produce temperatures above 0 °C at any point in its history, although this may simply reflect problems in accurately calibrating such models. Evidence of a geologically recent, extreme ice age on Mars was published in 2016. Just 370,000 years ago, the planet would have appeared more white than red. Mars' temperature and circulation vary every Martian year (as expected for any planet with an atmosphere). Mars lacks oceans,