After a 482 million kilometre journey through space, over six months, NASA’s $933 million InSight probe touched down safely on Mars early this morning.

Moments before the landing, anxious flight controllers and engineers silently passed around containers of peanuts, in accordance with a good luck tradition developed at NASA years ago.

As the InSight probe made its way through the rough, dusty atmosphere surrounding Mars, communications back to the Californian space station were totally cut for seven minutes — a period dubbed the ‘seven minutes of terror’.

But it seemed the peanuts worked their magic, as the successful landing, confirmed just before 7am on Tuesday, saw the space agency’s flight controllers and engineers erupt into cheers and applause.

Twitter exploded with scenes of NASA employees, donning maroon shirts, embracing one another and fist-bumping after they received the news that InSight had arrived, safe and sound.

The little probe will now commence digging exploration of the planet to assess its mineral components.

This expedition marks the first landing on the Red Planet in six years, since the Curiosity rover arrived in 2012.

Now, NASA’s real work begins, with the small device sending back the first of many pictures from its new home later that morning.

The mission’s deputy leader, Doctor Sue Smrekar, said that a successful landing can appear “smooth and easy — like a piece of cake”.

But the probe’s landing comes after decades of false starts and failed missions by experts to explore Mars.

According to Dr Smrekar, less than half the missions to Mars have actually been successful.

The journey to explore the Red Planet for extraterrestrial life, and more recently, its suitability to host the human race, has been peppered with disasters.

Here are just some of the dead robots, over the last two decades, currently inhabiting Mars’ space graveyard:

2016:

Name — Schiaparelli module (Europe)

Outcome — Explosion

The AUD $360 million experimental lander, called the Schiaparelli module, is believed to have exploded before crashing onto Mars.

The spacecraft was designed and launched by the European Space Agency and, upon impact, left a shallow crater on the planet’s surface.

Pictures, taken by NASA, revealed that the wreckage had left a black spot on the surface of Mars, approximately 50cm deep and 2.4m wide.

2011:

Name — Yinghuo-1 (China) and Phobos-Grunt (Russia)

Outcome — Equipment failure

Two space exploration orbiters, the Chinese Yinghuo-1 and the Russian Phobos-Grunt, were launched from Kazakstan in November, 2011.

Weighing 150kg, Yinghuo-1, was sent to orbit Mars for a period of two years, collecting information on the planet’s atmosphere and surface.

The AUD $89 million Phobos-Grunt’s mission was to visit the Mars’ moon, Phobos, and fly back samples of its soil.

However, upon launch, both the Yinghuo-1 and the Phobos-Grunt failed to perform the burns necessary to leave Earth’s orbit.

The two orbiters re-entered Earth’s atmosphere the following year and disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean.

2003:

Name — Beagle 2 (UK)

Outcome — Unknown

The fate of the Beagle 2 remains a mystery to this day but it is assumed that the spacecraft is resting in the graveyard of failed missions on the Red Planet.

The Mars lander was developed by the British for a joint European mission to look for signs of past life on the planet.

The project was understood to have cost around AUD $124 million.

While the lander was successfully launched into space, it did not make contact at the scheduled landing time.

The Beagle 2 was assumed to have crashed and the European Space Agency declared the mission lost the following year.

1999:

Name — Deep Space 2 and Mars Polar Lander (US)

Outcome — Lost contact

The late 90s were a devastating time for space exploration, with four failed missions recorded in less than two years.

NASA’s Deep Space 2 probes were sent to Mars in January, 1999, composing of two tiny probes called ‘Scott’ and ‘Amundsen’.

The mini probes were supposed to detach from the Mars Polar Lander and arrive safely, without the help of a parachute.

However efforts by NASA flight controllers to establish contact with both the lander and the probes were unanswered and the mission was declared a failure the following year.

1998:

Name — Mars Climate Orbiter (US)

Outcome — Miscalculation on-ground caused it to burn up in space





This 338kg orbiter was deployed from Cape Canaveral in December, 1998 before an embarrassing metric mistake caused its demise.

The mission, which cost more than AUD $450 million, was to study surface changes and atmosphere on Mars.

Due to a calculation glitch back on Earth, the spacecraft approached Mars far too quickly and resulted in it disintegrating upon arrival.

Scientists later explained that the Mars Climate Orbiter came too close to the Red Planet and burned up in it’s atmosphere.

1998:

Name — Nozomi (Japan)

Outcome — Ran out of fuel, electrical failure

The Nozomi spacecraft was launched in July, 1998 from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan.

It’s mission was to examine Martian solar winds to prepare for future missions and obtain images of the planet.

The name ‘Nozomi’ translate from Japanese to ‘hope’.

Ironically, the orbiter was left hoping for more fuel after some sloppy planning left it without enough gas in the tank to get it safely to Mars.

An electrical system failure also meant Nozomi never made it to the Martian orbit.

1996:

Name — Mars 96 (Russia)

Outcome — Launch failure

Sometimes, it’s hard to even get off the ground. This was certainly the case for the Mars 96 space probe, destined for Mars.

Engineers from the Russian Space Forces thought they had corrected mistakes from past attempts to reach Mars, but were soon proven wrong following a disastrous launch phase.

The probe launched from Kazakhstan but failed to initiate appropriate burns to propel it towards Mars.

The craft then re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart, leaving debris across 320km of Chile, Bolivia and the Pacific Ocean.