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The Babylonians studied astronomy in 400 BC, and came up with methods for predicting astronomical events.
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Tycho Brahe calculated the position of Mars 200 years before the telescope was invented.
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Galileo Galilei was the first to observe Mars with a telescope.
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Asaph Hall spotted the two moons on Mars and named them Phobos and Deimos.
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Giovanni Schiaparelli was the first to discover lines crossing each other on Mars. They are known to be water canals.
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The Soviet Union intended on Mars flyby. However, the spacecraft achieved Earth orbit only.
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MAriner 6 and 7 flew over Mars equator and took images of the atmosphere and syrface using remote sensors.
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Both of these orbiters reaches Mars, but Mars 2 crashed into the surface. Mars 3 landed but only returned data worth 20 seconds.
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Mariner 9 was the first satellite of Mars and into orbit.
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Mars 6 released a molecule into Mars atmosphere. This also sent data back to Earth and was the first mission that gathered data while it was in Mar's atmosphere.
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This spacecraft is one of the most expensive ones built by NASA, it was $265 million. The information brought back by the spacecraft proved that Mars was once warm and wet.
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The Mars Climate Orbiter conducted many experiments to probe the atmosphere of Mars. However, the Mars Climate ORbiter burned up after entering the planets atmosphere on September 23, 1999.
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Mars Polar Lander went to Mars to dig for water ice but lost contact with NASA after they landed. For a whole year scientists tried making contact and even sent the Mars Global Surveryor to search, but they were unsuccessful.
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The Deep Space 2 project mission consists of two probes which were to penetrate the surface of Mars near the south pole and send back data on the sub-surface properties.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft collected over 130,000 images of the Mars climate. surface, and mineralogy.
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Mars Odyssey was sent to study the climate, geology, and mineralogy of Mars and the mission has been extended for the third time in 2004.
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The Mars Exploration Rover was used to analyze the environment and minerals.
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The Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter is designed to orbit Mars over a full martian year and gather data with six scientific instruments,
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MAVEN is being built to explore Mars' upper atmosphere and ionosphere, and interactions with the solar wind,
