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The Babylonians made observations of Mars as early as 400 B.C., and named it Negral: the great hero and king of conflicts.
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The ancient Egyptians observed Mars, and named it Har Decher (The Red One).
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The Romans named it Mars, while the Greeks called it Ares, both after the god of war.
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Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer, was able to calculate the position of Mars pretty accurately in the 1500s.
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In 1609, Johannes Kepler published his laws of planetery motion, the first of which states that Mars' orbit is not circular, which was earlier assumed.
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Galileo was the first to use the telescope to observe the sky, and observed Mars with it.
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Huygens was a Dutch astronomer that designed an advanced telescope, which he used to observe Mars. He calculated that a day on Mars was about 24 hours.
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Cassini observes Mars, and determines that its day is 24 hours ans 40 minutes long.
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Miraldi observes white spots at Mars' poles, and thinks that they are ice caps.
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With a telescope he himself built, he studied Mars. He assumed that the axis tilt was 30 degrees (it is actually 25.19 degrees), and deduced that Mars had an atmosphere.
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He noticed yellow dust clouds on Mars, and noticed that its ice caps melt during the spring.
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They calculated Mars' rotational period to be 24 hours, 37 minutes, 22.6 seconds, which is only one-tenth of a second off from what we know today.
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He discovers the moons of Mars, and names them Phobos (fear) and Deimos (terror).
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Mariner 4 was the first unmanned probe to reach Mars.
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These missions gave scientists a more detailed picture of Mars' surface (showed about one-fifth of the surface).
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This craft became the first probe to orbit around another planet, and proved that Mars has volcanoes.
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The Soviet Union launched two spacecraft, which measured the temperature of Mars, and took many pictures.
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Mars 5 is launched into orbit by the Soviet Unions, returning data about the Martian atmosphere and around sixty images
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These spacecraft were sent to look for life on Mars. They did not find any life, but they did return a lot of data/photographs of Mars.
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This mission performed investigations relating to Mars' geology and atmosphere, and gathered a lot of data.
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This craft carried the Sojourner rover, the first rover to be sent to Mars.
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This craft is orbiting Mars and collecting data, trying to detect any presence of water.
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The Spirit and Oppurtunity rovers were sent on Mars to investigate its geology.
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This spacecraft is an orbiter that carries many scientific instruments.
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This craft was sent to explore the Northern Plains, and acted as a weather station.
