BBC News published this video item, entitled “Mars landings that did (and didn’t) go to plan – BBC News” – below is their description.
There will be two attempts to land on Mars in 2021 – by Nasa and the China National Space Administration.
Nasa’s Perseverance is scheduled to touch down on the Martian surface on 18 February.
If successful, it will be the biggest and most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to land on another planet.
China’s Tianwen-1 will attempt a similar feat in May or June.
The US and the former Soviet Union are the only countries to successfully land on the Red Planet, though more have sent spacecraft to enter Mars’ orbit.
Science reporter Laura Foster looks back at 60 years of successes and failures.
BBC News YouTube Channel
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In This Story: Soviet Union
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a federal socialist state in Northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, it was a one-party state (until 1990) governed by the Communist Party, with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian SFSR.
The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 when the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government that had earlier replaced the monarchy of the Russian Empire.
On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation (formerly the Russian SFSR) assumed the Soviet Union’s rights and obligations and is recognized as its continued legal personality.
