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Mission record

Mars 3

Also known as Mars 3 Orbiter, M-71 No.172, Mars3

U.S.S.R · Launched

Explore trajectory

Partial success · Partial success

The second of the two identical Mars 2 and Mars 3 spacecraft, each with a bus/orbiter module and an attached descent/lander module. The primary scientific objectives of the Mars 3 orbiter were to image the martian surface and clouds, determine the temperature on Mars, study the topography, composition and physical properties of the surface, measure properties of the atmosphere, monitor solar radiation, the solar wind and the interplanetary and martian magnetic fields, and act as a communications relay to send signals from the lander to Earth. Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retro-rockets, the lander achieved a soft landing and began operations, but after 20 sec the instruments stopped working for unknown reasons. The orbiter had suffered a partial loss of fuel and reached a long 12 day, 19 hour period orbit instead of the planned 25 hour one.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Proton Booster Plus Upper Stage and Escape Stages
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), U.S.S.R
Countries
Soviet Union
Mission types
Orbiter, Lander

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched towards Mars from a Tyazheliy Sputnik platform

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1971-05-28T15:26:30Z and an Earth orbit with a periapsis of 140.00 km, an apoapsis of 234.00 km, a period of 88.20 minutes and an inclination of 51.600°. Mars 3 was launched towards Mars from a Tyazheliy Sputnik (71-049C) Earth orbiting platform. That page disagrees with itself on the epochs and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved: it ends the Earth-orbit epoch at 1971-01-01 00:00:00, which precedes the launch time it prints at the head of the same page, and starts the interplanetary cruise at 1971-05-28 00:00:00, which precedes it too.

    Earth

  2. Milestone

    Mid-course correction

    A mid-course correction was made on 8 June.

  3. Landing

    Soft landing, then the instruments stopped working after 20 sec

    Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retro-rockets, the lander achieved a soft landing at 45 S, 158 W and began operations. However, after 20 sec the instruments stopped working for unknown reasons, perhaps as a result of the massive surface dust storms raging at the time of landing. NASA reports a brief signal starting at 13:50:35 UT and the designer reports 14.5 seconds of transmission. The clock standard and competing site coordinates need resolution before reconstructing a precise surface state; deployment of PROP-M was not confirmed.

    Mars

  4. Orbit insertion

    A truncated burn put it into a 12 day, 19 hour period orbit

    The orbiter had suffered from a partial loss of fuel and did not have enough to put itself into a planned 25 hour orbit. The engine instead performed a truncated burn to put the spacecraft into a long 12 day, 19 hour period orbit about Mars with an inclination thought to be similar to that of Mars 2 (48.9 degrees). NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page prints a different orbit for the same insertion and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved: a periapsis of 1500.00 km, an apoapsis of 211400.00 km, a period of 12.79 days and an inclination of 60.000°, beginning at 1971-12-02 00:00:00.

    Mars

  5. Deployment

    Descent module released 4 hours 35 minutes before Mars

    The descent module (71-049F) was released at 09:14 UT on 2 December 1971, 4 hours 35 minutes before reaching Mars. The descent module entered the martian atmosphere at roughly 5.7 km/s. The identifier is recorded as the page prints it: this batch's GCAT enumeration gives the descent module the piece 1971-049E, and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved.

    Mars

  6. Mission end

    Reported completion of the orbiter program

    The Mars 2 and 3 orbiters sent back a large volume of data covering the period from December 1971 to March 1972, although transmissions continued through August. It was announced that Mars 2 and 3 had completed their missions by 22 August 1972, after 362 orbits completed by Mars 2 and 20 orbits by Mars 3. The later NASA chronology distinguishes the August completion announcement from a reported July end of contact. This date is not a measured last-state epoch.

    Mars

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Mars 3 Orbiter · Orbiter

    Destinations: Mars

    • Mars 3 descent module · Lander

      Destinations: Mars

      • PROP-M · Rover

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

Known dates and encounters do not uniquely determine a flight path. This mission’s sourced timeline is available above; no verified trajectory is currently published here.

What is needed to reconstruct this path?
  • A frame-qualified position and vector velocity at an epoch, or equivalent complete orbital elements.
  • Approach/departure directions and burn vectors between the reported encounters; body names and encounter distances alone are insufficient.
  • Independent descent/return states and a source-defined body-fixed landing location; a landing date alone does not define either.
  • Separate state histories and release epochs for the listed vehicles; a parent mission trajectory cannot be assigned to every component.
  • Finer event-time constraints where required by an orbital reconstruction; the stored day/month/year precision is retained.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 14, 2026