Did any space vehicles from Earth ever land on Mars?

Humanity's first successful landing on the Red Planet occurred on July 20, 1976, when NASA's Viking 1 lander touched down on a flat, golden-hued plain known as Chryse Planitia. This historic event, which took place on the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, provided the first-ever images taken from the Martian (Review) surface. Before the lander could descend, its companion orbiter spent over a month photographing the planet to find a safe and suitable location for the landing.

The Viking 1 mission was a monumental undertaking with a primary objective of searching for evidence of life. Its robotic arm scooped up Martian soil for analysis in its onboard laboratory. While no definitive proof of life was found, the lander spent more than six years studying the cold, volcanic soil and the thin, carbon dioxide atmosphere. The data it transmitted back to Earth fundamentally reshaped our understanding of Mars.

While the Soviet Union's Mars 3 probe did manage to reach the surface in 1971, it ceased transmitting data after only a few seconds. Because of this, Viking 1 is celebrated as the first mission to successfully land on Mars and complete its scientific objectives. Its sister craft, Viking 2, followed with its own successful landing just a few months later in September 1976.