Hello and welcome to another edition of Truth or Fail where today we are talking about Mars exploration, a subject that I am mildly obsessed with and I’m not just a fair weather fan. You know ‘Oh there’s a, there’s a thing. It just landed’. I’ve been following Mars explorations since I was, like, before a lot of you were born.

But, of course, Mars has been in the news a bit more than usual following the successful landing of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity Rover earlier this week! So of course we have to do a Truth or Fail about the amazing red planet. A perfect score earns you some fake astronaut wings or something. Let’s play!

Round number one: Firsties.

Fact number one: The 1960’s were a great decade for Moon exploration but not so great for Mars. Despite repeated attempts by both the US and the USSR to send spacecraft to Mars during the 1960’s, not one reached orbit or got close enough for decent photos. But hey, we were busy trying to get to the Moon.

Or

Fact number two: The first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars, that would be the Soviet space probe Mars 2 which orbited the planet in late 1971 and sent a lander to the surface that proceeded to crash into Mars rendering it useless.