A Mars landing is a landing of a spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Of multiple attempted Mars landings by robotic, unmanned spacecraft, eight have been successful. There have also been studies for a possible human mission to Mars, including a landing, but none have been attempted. The most recent landing took place on November 26th, 2018 by the NASA probe InSight. Beginning with the Mars Exploration Rovers, landers on the surface of Mars have used orbiting spacecraft as communications satellites for relaying their data to Earth. The landers use UHF transmitters to send their data to the orbiters, which then relay the data to Earth using either X band or Ka band frequencies. These higher frequencies, along with more powerful transmitters and larger antennas, permit the orbiters to send the data much faster than the landers could manage transmitting directly to Earth, which conserves valuable time on the receiving antennas.
Additional future missions are the Mars 2020 rover, the Chinese Mars Global Remote Sensing Orbiter and Small Rover, and the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission 2 orbiter. The ESA ExoMars rover, also planned for launch in 2020, should obtain soil samples from up to 2 meters depth and make an extensive search for biosignatures and biomolecules. There is a proposal for a Mars Sample Return Mission by ESA and NASA, but this has been delayed until at least 2024. This mission would be part of the European Aurora Programme.
