Mariner 4
NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft is currently idle and in orbit around the Sun, but its historical legacy is secure. Mariner 4 flew past Mars on July 15, 1965, becoming the first spacecraft to take close-up photos of another planet. The probe was expected to survive for only eight months after its Mars encounter, but it managed to work for another three years while in solar orbit, “continuing long-term studies of the solar wind environment and making coordinated measurements with Mariner 5, a sister ship launched to Venus in 1967,” as NASA explains.
