I'm going to see an image of Mars that no-one has ever seen before.

Just got so close but we just couldn't do the science.

Oh it's just incredible to see that Mars you know... is really there.

The Soviet Union was first to attempt to land on Mars.

Sputnik 24 failed,

Mars 2 crashed into the Martian surface

but it was Mars 3 that was first to properly land on the red planet.

But it only had time to send this picture before it gave up completely.

Probably is the most exciting moment of your life

when you receive signal from the planet.

Greater disappointment when it stopped transmitting

and you could not do anything else.

Jump to Mars 6

which managed to send more than three and half minutes of data and then...

Silence.

What's more a microchip failure meant a lot of what was gathered

turned out to be unusable.

Things got even worse for Mars 7 which

missed the planet entirely by 1300 km.

That's three Grand Canyons worth.

But Mars landings started to get really good in 1976 when the Americans arrived.

Nasa landed on the red planet exactly seven years

to the day after they put the first man on the Moon.

And there's the first piece of information coming in.

Well there are rocks.

There are rocks, yes.

So second to land on Mars, but first to complete its mission.

Not long after Viking 2 landed on the opposite side of the planet

and together they took over 1,400 photographs .

But 20 years went by before anyone tried to land again.

Russia's Mars 96 launched into Earth's orbit

but then crashed back down around South America a few hours later.

But in 1997, Nasa had a reason to celebrate.

Pathfinder used airbags to land

before this guy,

rolled down a ramp and became the first wheeled vehicle on another planet.

We're there to understand Mars' climate

and how clear evidence of climate change on that planet

relates to climate change that occurs on our own.

Mars Polar Lander should then have done this on the south pole

but instead it crashed and we never heard from it despite people calling on it to 'phone home'.

Then in 2003, the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 landed

but we just didn't know that for over a decade.

We do not have a signal from Beagle 2.

It was found in 2015 and we saw then that its solar panels hadn't unfolded properly.

There was huge relief in 2004 with successful landings of Spirit and Opportunity

who made huge discoveries.

We believe, at this place on Mars, for some period in time

this was the kind of place that would have been suitable for life.

They were only supposed to last for 90 days but fed back data for years.

Standing by for touchdown.

They were followed by Phoenix in 2008

which went further north than any previous mission.

Then Curiosity arrived- basically a mobile science lab on wheels.

Touchdown confirmed! We're safe on Mars!

But in 2016, a problem with the navigation system left Schiaparelli

free-falling into the Martian surface and, unsurprisingly, did not survive.

And then there was InSight and this celebration that went viral.

And that brings us right up to 2020 and China's Tianwen-1 and Nasa's Perseverance.