Image of the Day: Marking Half a Century Since America First Landed on the Red Planet...

NASA

Today marks 50 years since NASA reached the surface of Mars with the safe landing of its Viking 1 lander. Viking 1's sister craft Viking 2 triumphantly set foot on the Red Planet less than three months later...on September 3, 1976.

Over the next five decades, America would send more robotic probes to the Martian surface: Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover in 1997, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004, the Phoenix Mars lander in 2008, the Curiosity Mars rover in 2012, the InSight Mars lander in 2018, and the Perseverance Mars rover with its Ingenuity Mars helicopter in 2021.

When will the next U.S. Mars landing occur? The Mars Sample Return mission was originally scheduled to launch this year. Alas, that was not meant to be.

Instead, three Mars helicopters dubbed Skyfall will be sent to the Red Planet courtesy of the nuclear-powered Space Reactor-1 Freedom mission in late 2028. Stay tuned!