First successful Mars lander

The first successful Mars Lander was Viking 1, which touched down on the surface of the Red Planet at 11:53 a.m. (UTC) on 20 July 1976. Viking 1 was a stationary lander fitted with a suite of cameras and scientific instruments as well as a robot arm that allowed it to investigate the soils and rocks that surrounded its landing site. It was powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (similar to the one used in the Curiosity rover) which allowed it to remain active until 13 November 1982 – setting an endurance record of 7 years 85 days that stood until it was beaten by NASA's Opportunity rover in 2011.

Viking 1 was not the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the surface of Mars – that was achieved by the Soviet Union's Mars 3, which touched down on 2 December 1971. However, Mars 3 failed shortly after landing, with transmissions abruptly cutting out after less than 20 seconds on the surface. It only had time to send a garbled and corrupted partial panorama of its landing site before it was lost. If successful, Mars 3 would have been the first lander to deploy a rover on Mars (the tiny, tethered Prop-M rover).