Today we are going to discuss the different mission statistics of launching a mission to Mars. With several upcoming Mars missions set to launch in the near term future, lets take a look at the statistics about past performance.
We will take a look at the Mars missions, whether they were a failure or a success and look at some of the data analytics. There have been a total of 57 missions to Mars, with the following breakdowns to help understand some of the history behind Mars exploration.
To learn about the Mars Missions launching in 2020, check out this article on the subject.
Mission Type Breakdown
In this breakdown, we see that the most popular type of mission is the orbit, which occurred 2x as often as the landers and accounts for 38.5% of all missions as of this writing.
| Mission Type | Number Of Missions |
| Orbiter | 22 |
| Lander | 11 |
| Flyby | 9 |
| Rover | 5 |
| Gravity assist | 2 |
| Lander/Flyby | 2 |
| Orbiter/Phobos lander | 2 |
| Two CubeSats flyby supporting InSight | 1 |
| Orbiter/Phobos sample | 1 |
| Penetrator | 1 |
| Orbiter/Penetrators | 1 |
Mission Types By Decade
As we can see in the graph below, the Space Race and then the 1970’s were the greatest time for space missions to Mars. After the 1970’s, the number of missions over the decades have never been more than 9.
| Decade | Number of missions |
| 1960s | 12 |
| 1970s | 16 |
| 1980s | 2 |
| 1990s | 9 |
| 2000s | 9 |
| 2010s | 9 |
| 2020s | 3-4 so far |
Outcomes Of Missions
As shown with the graph below, 28 missions have either been successful or operational. That is slightly higher than the 29 missions that have failed in some sort of manner.
| Result/Status | Number Of Missions |
| Successful | 20 |
| Spacecraft failure | 14 |
| Launch failure | 10 |
| Operational | 8 |
| Partial failure | 3 |
| General Failure | 1 |
| Lander failure | 1 |
Mission Operator Breakdown
As the table below shows, the vast majority of the launches have been from either the US or Russian space programs. This might change with the privatization of space and will change with more countries getting involved in space.
| Operator | Number Of Missions |
| NASA (United States) | 27 |
| Soviet Union | 18 |
| ESA (EU) | 4 |
| OKB-1 (Russia) | 2 |
| CNSA (China) | 1 |
| ESA/Roscosmos (Joint Mission) | 1 |
| ISAS (Japan) | 1 |
| ISRO (India) | 1 |
| Rosaviakosmos (Russia) | 1 |
| Roskosmos (Russia) | 1 |
For information about NASA Missions, check out this link. For a quick summary of all the Mars Missions, check out this link.
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