Viking 1
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with "Viking 2") sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. On July 20, 1976, it became the second spacecraft to soft-land on Mars, and the first soft lander to successfully perform its mission. (The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars was the Soviet Union's Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, which stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds.) "Viking 1" held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of days (over 6¼ years) or Martian solar days, until that record was broken by "Opportunity" on May 19, 2010.
Missions (TV series)
In the near future, the first manned space mission to Mars, Ulysses 1, is a European mission funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and William Meyer, a billionaire Swiss philanthropist. The crew is made up of the best astronauts and European scientists, including French, Italians and Germans. Jeanne Renoir, the crew psychologist, monitors the mental health of the crew. After ten months travelling through space, a few hours from starting the landing procedure, the astronauts learn from William Meyer that they will not be the first astronauts to land on Mars. They were overtaken by a US mission with a faster vessel funded by NASA and a multi-national computer company. The only sign of life from the American mission is an alarming video and the European mission decides to investigate. On Mars the European astronauts do not find the Americans but a Russian, Vladimir Komarov, who died aboard the Soyuz 1 spacecraft in 1967.