Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to flyby Mars and the first craft to transmit images of another planet back to Earth
Credits: NASA Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to fly over Mars and the first to take detailed images of the red planet. The blurry images of craters and bare ground led scientists to believe that Mars looks a lot like the Moon. The photos also immediately made it clear that Mars is not a place for life. Despite this, NASA sent new scouts to Mars because Mariner 4 had only been able to photograph a small portion of the surface. Subsequent missions showed that Mars is very different from the Moon, that there is an active weather system on Mars, and that the planet has been much wetter in the distant past. March for Mariner's Visit 4 It's hard to say when the discussions about life on Mars got serious, but it must have been sometime in the late 1800s/early twentieth century when new observations by astronomers sparked a sharp rise in interest in the planet. American astronomer Percival Lowell studied the planet from his observatory in Flagstaff for years. He made drawings ...