Named for the Roman god of war, Mars is not very good at visitors

NASA's Mariner 4 made the first successful navigation of the red planet in 1965, sending back 21 photos.

Mariner 9 made it orbit around Mars and sent more than 7,000 photos.

NASA V1s and 2s not only set spacecraft in orbit around Mars in 1976, but also on the surface. The twin vikings were the first successful hooks on Mars on planet Earth.

The 1990s were not as good for NASA. A humiliating English-metric conversion convicted the Mars Observer in 1993. Another US orbital was later lost, as well as a lander and two companion probes that had the role of penetrating the surface.

In spite of decades of testing, Russia, in particular, was lucky with Mars.

The then Soviet Union was the first to try a Mars flying operation in 1960. The space ship never reached the Earth's orbit. After several flying failures and flight failures, the Soviets received a pair of spacecraft on Mars orbit in 1971 and received real data. But the band of comrades was a total bust.

And so did the Soviets / Russians in the most recent attempt with China in 2011. The discouraging objective was to land a spacecraft on Mars Phobos to collect and return samples and to put a second spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mars. He did not even get out of the Earth's orbit.

Europe was also bitten the serpent at Mars, just like Japan.

While the European Space Agency has satellites that work around Mars, both landing attempts have flopped. Just two years ago, his lander hit the surface so quickly, dug a crater. The only Japanese Mars ship launched in 1998 did not get into orbit.

India, meanwhile, operates a satellite around Mars for four years, its first and only shot on the red planet.

There is a heavy European presence on NASA's InSight. Germany is responsible for the mechanical swamp designed to shatter 5 meters in the Martian surface to perform underground heat measurements, while France directs the earthquake monitoring seismometer.

Surface, Curiosity is the only thing that works on Mars. Currently in orbit: US Odyssey since 2001, Mars Express from Europe (2003), US Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006), US Maven (2014), Mangalyaan orbiter (2014) and European Trace Gas Orbiter (2016).