Today, 27 years ago, on July 4, 1998 (Lunar Calendar, May 11, 1998), the Mars Spacecraft spacecraft landed on Mars. The Mars Spacecraft landed on Mars. On July 4, 1998, the US Mars Spacecraft navigated more than 400 million kilometers, successfully landed on Mars and released a robot to explore Mars. During this event known as one of man's most successful interstellar exploration programs to date, the Mars Spacecraft returned 2.6 billion bits of scientific information to the ground, 16,000 images and 15,000 complete chemical analyses of Mars rocks and soil. Landers can see the ground sprinkled by flooding - the sand spacecraft observed the surface of Mars.