Every expedition in the atlas

Terra Incognita charts what people had actually seen, century by century. Each expedition below has its own page, with its route, its steps and its sources, and opens in the atlas where the fog lifts as it advances.

Land

• Han mission to the West — Zhang Qian · 138 BCE – 126 BCE
  Reach the Yuezhi, driven west by the Xiongnu, and win them to an alliance against the Xiongnu.
• Pilgrimage to India — Faxian · 399 CE – 412 CE
  Seek in India complete copies of the Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic rules, which were incomplete in China.
• Journey to the West — Xuanzang · 629 CE – 645 CE
  Settle his doubts about the Buddhist scriptures by studying in India and bringing back the texts.
• Mission to the Volga — Ahmad ibn Fadlan · 921 CE – 922 CE
  Carry the caliph’s letter, gifts, jurists and teachers to the king of the Volga Bulgars, with money for a fortress against the Khazars.
• Pilgrimage from Granada to Mecca — Ibn Jubayr · 1183 CE – 1185 CE
  Perform the hajj and record every stage of the road from al-Andalus to the Hejaz and back.
• Journey to Cathay — Marco Polo · 1271 CE – 1295 CE
  Go back to Kublai Khan as his envoys, with the pope’s reply and oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulchre.
• The Rihla — Ibn Battuta · 1325 CE – 1354 CE
  Make the pilgrimage to Mecca and visit the Prophet’s tomb at Medina; the wish ‘to travel through the earth’, as he called it, grew on the way.
• The long walk from Malhado — Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca · 1528 CE – 1536 CE
  Reach a Spanish settlement alive, from a beach on the Gulf coast with no ships, no horses and no idea of the distance.
• Ahead of Fray Marcos, to Cíbola — Estevanico · 1539 CE
  Scout the road north from Culiacán to the populous towns Cabeza de Vaca had heard of, and report back by messenger.
• The entrada to Cíbola and Quivira — Francisco Vázquez de Coronado · 1540 CE – 1542 CE
  Take possession of the Seven Cities of Cíbola reported by Fray Marcos de Niza and find the wealth that was assumed to lie beyond them.
• Over the Urals into Sibir — Yermak Timofeyevich · 1582 CE – 1585 CE
  Carry the war beyond the Urals against Khan Kuchum and open the fur country of the Irtysh.
• Up the Amazon to Quito and back — Pedro Teixeira · 1637 CE – 1639 CE
  Establish whether the Amazon could carry a force from the Atlantic to the Andes, and fix a Portuguese claim as far upstream as possible.
• From Istanbul to Mecca — Evliya Çelebi · 1671 CE – 1672 CE
  Perform the hajj at last, and describe every town, shrine and stage of the road on the way.
• Down the Mississippi to the Gulf — René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle · 1682 CE
  Follow the great river from the Illinois country to its mouth and determine whether it opened on the Gulf of Mexico or on the Pacific.
• Crossing the continent — Alexander Mackenzie · 1789 CE – 1793 CE
  Reach the western ocean across North America.
• Search for the Niger — Mungo Park · 1795 CE – 1797 CE
  Reach the Niger and ascertain its course and, if possible, its rise and termination.
• Expedition to the Americas — Alexander von Humboldt · 1799 CE – 1804 CE
  Measure and collect the natural world of Spain’s American colonies, at Humboldt’s own expense and with passports from the Spanish crown.
• Corps of Discovery — Meriwether Lewis · 1804 CE – 1806 CE
  Explore the Missouri and find the most direct water route across the continent to the Pacific, for commerce, as Jefferson’s instructions put it.
• Fort Mandan to the Pacific — Sacagawea · 1804 CE – 1806 CE
  Carry the expedition west as interpreter to the Shoshone, so that horses could be bought for the crossing of the Rocky Mountains.
• To Timbuktu and across the Sahara — René Caillié · 1827 CE – 1828 CE
  Reach Timbuktu in disguise and bring back a first-hand description of the city and the Niger.
• Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound — Edward John Eyre · 1840 CE – 1841 CE
  Force a way into the interior north of Adelaide and, failing that, explore the coast westward towards King George’s Sound.
• Moreton Bay to Port Essington — Ludwig Leichhardt · 1844 CE – 1845 CE
  Find an overland stock route from the Darling Downs to the garrison at Port Essington and describe the country on the way.
• Six years in the Sahara and the Sudan — Heinrich Barth · 1849 CE – 1855 CE
  Open a route from Tripoli to Lake Chad, survey the central Sudan and report on its trade.
• Crossing Africa — David Livingstone · 1853 CE – 1856 CE
  Open a trade road from Sekeletu’s country on the upper Zambezi to the coast, first west to the Atlantic, then east to the Indian Ocean.
• The East African Expedition — Richard Francis Burton · 1857 CE – 1859 CE
  Find the limits of the “Sea of Ujiji” described by Arab traders, and report on the produce and peoples of the interior; the public expected the source of the Nile.
• Victorian Exploring Expedition — Burke and Wills · 1860 CE – 1861 CE
  Cross the continent from Melbourne to the northern coast before South Australia could, and report on the country and a telegraph route.
• The source of the Nile with Grant — John Hanning Speke · 1860 CE – 1863 CE
  Return to the lake sighted in 1858, find its northern outlet and follow the Nile down to Egypt.
• Sixth expedition: Adelaide to the northern sea — John McDouall Stuart · 1861 CE – 1862 CE
  Cross the continent through its centre and find a practicable line for an overland telegraph to the north coast.
• Up the White Nile to Lake Albert — Samuel and Florence Baker · 1861 CE – 1865 CE
  Meet the expedition coming down from the interior and close the last unknown stretch of the White Nile.
• The pundit’s route surveys to Lhasa and Thok Jalung — Nain Singh · 1865 CE – 1867 CE
  Reach Lhasa disguised as a trader, fix its position and survey the great road along the Tsangpo; in 1867, explore the upper Sutlej and Indus and the gold fields east of Gartok.
• Tibesti, Borku, Wadai and Darfur — Gustav Nachtigal · 1869 CE – 1874 CE
  Deliver the Prussian presents at Kukawa and explore the unknown country between Fezzan and the Nile.
• The Green and the Colorado, 1869 — John Wesley Powell · 1869 CE
  Run the unmapped canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers from Wyoming to the Virgin River and measure what they cut through.
• First Central Asian expedition — Nikolai Przhevalsky · 1870 CE – 1873 CE
  Cross Mongolia to Peking, then reach the northern bend of the Yellow River, the Ordos and Lake Koko Nor, surveying the route and collecting plants and animals throughout; the Geographical Society also wanted light on current events in the Muslim-held north-west of China.
• Across Africa by the Congo — Henry Morton Stanley · 1874 CE – 1877 CE
  Settle the shape of the great lakes and follow the Lualaba wherever it led.
• Two years in Arabia Deserta — Charles Doughty · 1876 CE – 1878 CE
  Copy the inscribed Nabataean tombs of Mada’in Salih and see the interior of Arabia as a traveller who would not pass for a Muslim.
• Peking to Kashmir by the Mustagh Pass — Francis Younghusband · 1887 CE
  Go back to India overland from Peking by the direct Gobi track to Hami, the length of Chinese Turkestan and a crossing of the Himalayas, joining up what was known of Central Asia from China and from India.
• Travels in West Africa — Mary Kingsley · 1893 CE – 1895 CE
  Learn the tropics, in her words, collect fresh-water fishes for the British Museum, and study the religion and law of West African peoples, which she called fetish.
• Fram drift — Fridtjof Nansen · 1893 CE – 1896 CE
  Freeze a ship into the pack north of Siberia and drift with the ice across the unknown polar sea, through or near the North Pole.
• The Tarim, Lop Nur and northern Tibet — Sven Hedin · 1899 CE – 1902 CE
  Map the Tarim from a boat, find where Lop Nur had lain and why it moved, and cross Tibet, reaching Lhasa in disguise if he could.
• Northwest Passage — Roald Amundsen · 1903 CE – 1906 CE
  Locate the north magnetic pole and take a ship through the Northwest Passage from end to end.
• North Pole expedition — Matthew Henson · 1908 CE – 1909 CE
  Reach the North Pole with Peary: build the sledges, drive a division of dogs and speak for the expedition with the Inughuit.
• North Pole attempt — Robert Peary · 1908 CE – 1909 CE
  Be first to the North Pole.
• South Pole expedition — Roald Amundsen · 1910 CE – 1912 CE
  Be first to reach the South Pole.
• Terra Nova expedition — Robert Falcon Scott · 1910 CE – 1913 CE
  “To reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement,” in the words of Scott’s appeal, while carrying out a broad programme of geology, biology and meteorology from a base in McMurdo Sound.
• Damascus to Ha’il and Baghdad — Gertrude Bell · 1913 CE – 1914 CE
  Reach Ha’il, the capital of Ibn Rashid in Najd, and if possible go further, mapping the road and its wells.
• Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition — Ernest Shackleton · 1914 CE – 1916 CE
  Cross Antarctica via the South Pole.
• On foot to Lhasa — Alexandra David-Néel · 1923 CE – 1924 CE
  Cross eastern Tibet on foot as beggar pilgrims and reach Lhasa, closed to foreigners, in answer to the ban she called absurd, and show, in her words, what the will of a woman could achieve.
• The last march towards Z — Percy Fawcett · 1925 CE
  Cross the Mato Grosso from Cuiabá to the headwaters of the Xingu and find the ruined city Fawcett called Z.
• Thesiger’s first crossing of the Empty Quarter — Wilfred Thesiger · 1946 CE – 1947 CE
  Cross the unexplored eastern sands of the Rub‘ al Khali from Dhofar to Liwa, near the Trucial Coast, and come back by the unknown steppes of western Oman, with Bedouin companions and on their terms.

Summits

• The first ascent of Mont Blanc — Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat · 1786 CE
  Reach the summit of the highest mountain in the Alps, carry a barometer to the top and take a reading there.
• The first ascent of the Matterhorn — Edward Whymper · 1865 CE
  Climb the Matterhorn from Zermatt by the Hörnli ridge before Carrel's Italian party reached the top from Breuil.
• Lucy Walker on the Matterhorn — Lucy Walker · 1871 CE
  Be the first woman on the summit of the Matterhorn, ahead of Meta Brevoort.
• The first ascent of Kilimanjaro — Hans Meyer · 1889 CE
  Reach the highest point of Kibo across the ice cap that had turned Meyer back in 1887, and survey the summit region from a chain of supplied camps.
• The FitzGerald expedition to Aconcagua — Matthias Zurbriggen · 1896 CE – 1897 CE
  In FitzGerald's own order, triangulate the country round Aconcagua and then make the first ascent of the peak; from mid-December they knew that a German party from Santiago meant to try the mountain too.
• The Mackinder expedition to Mount Kenya — Halford Mackinder · 1899 CE
  Make the first ascent of Mount Kenya and survey its glaciers, peaks, plants and animals.
• Nun Kun and Pinnacle Peak — Fanny Bullock Workman · 1906 CE
  Explore and map the Nun Kun massif above the Suru valley, entering it from the east by the Shafat glacier, and climb as high on it as they could.
• Annie Peck's conquest of Huascarán — Annie Smith Peck · 1908 CE
  Reach the summit of Huascarán, which she believed higher than Aconcagua, and measure its altitude with a hypsometer.
• The first ascent of Denali — Hudson Stuck · 1913 CE
  Reach the true summit of Denali by the Muldrow glacier and the north-east ridge, and settle the claims of Cook and the Sourdoughs.
• The third Everest expedition — George Mallory · 1924 CE
  Climb Everest from Tibet by the North Col and the north-east ridge, with or without the new oxygen apparatus.
• The French Annapurna expedition — Maurice Herzog · 1950 CE
  Climb Dhaulagiri or Annapurna, the two mountains for which the French held permits, and so make the first ascent of any of the fourteen mountains above 8,000 metres.
• The first ascent of Everest — Tenzing Norgay · 1953 CE
  Climb Everest by the South Col and the south-east ridge with oxygen, on Britain's only permit before the French took their turn in 1954.
• The Willy Merkl memorial expedition to Nanga Parbat — Hermann Buhl · 1953 CE
  Climb Nanga Parbat by the Rakhiot flank in memory of Willy Merkl, on the route where the German expeditions of 1934 and 1937 had lost twenty-six men, ten in 1934 and sixteen in 1937.
• The Italian K2 expedition — Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli · 1954 CE
  Make the first ascent of K2 by the Abruzzi Spur, with a scientific programme in the Baltoro under the geologist Ardito Desio.
• The Japanese Women's Everest Expedition — Junko Tabei · 1975 CE
  Put a woman on the summit of Everest by the South Col route of 1953, with a fifteen-member team of Japanese women from Junko Tabei's Joshi-Tohan club and their Sherpas.
• Everest without oxygen — Reinhold Messner · 1978 CE
  Reach the summit of Everest by the South Col without supplementary oxygen, which many physiologists believed could not be done.
• Everest solo in the monsoon — Reinhold Messner · 1980 CE
  Climb Everest alone from Tibet, in the monsoon, without bottled oxygen, fixed ropes or prepared camps, and with no companion above advanced base.
• K2 in the black summer — Wanda Rutkiewicz · 1986 CE
  Climb K2 by its normal route, the Abruzzi Spur, in a party of four, without outside help or bottled oxygen.

Sea

• Expedition to Punt — Hannu · 2000 BCE
  Lead an army from Coptos to the Red Sea and dispatch a ship to Punt for fresh myrrh, in Year 8 of Mentuhotep III.
• Voyage of the Periplus — Hanno the Navigator · 500 BCE
  Sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of the Libyphoenicians on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
• Voyage to the North — Pytheas of Massalia · 325 BCE
  Sail into the Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules to Britain and the far north; his purpose is not recorded, though the tin of the north may have been one aim.
• Return from India — Nearchus · 325 BCE – 324 BCE
  Bring Alexander’s fleet from the Indus to Persia and, in Nearchus’s words as Arrian gives them, learn the coast, its harbours, islands and bays, its towns, and whether the land was habitable or desert.
• Settlement of Greenland — Erik the Red · 982 CE – 986 CE
  Find the land Gunnbjörn Ulfsson had seen west of Iceland and, after three winters exploring it, bring settlers there.
• Voyage to Vinland — Leif Erikson · 1000 CE – 1001 CE
  In the Greenlanders’ saga, explore the lands Bjarni Herjólfsson had sighted west of Greenland; in Erik’s saga, Leif comes upon them by chance on his way home from Norway.
• Treasure fleet voyages — Zheng He · 1405 CE – 1433 CE
  Display Ming power and extend the tribute trade across the Indian Ocean.
• Voyage to the Cape — Bartolomeu Dias · 1487 CE – 1488 CE
  Follow the coast of Africa beyond Diogo Cão’s last pillar, to find a way round the continent and word of Prester John.
• First Atlantic crossing — Christopher Columbus · 1492 CE – 1493 CE
  Reach Asia by sailing west.
• First voyage to India — Vasco da Gama · 1497 CE – 1499 CE
  Sail round Africa to India ‘to make discoveries and go in search of spices’, in the words of the journal kept on board.
• The voyage of the Matthew — John Cabot · 1497 CE
  Find a short western route to the spice lands of Asia for English merchants.
• Indian Ocean pilotage — Ahmad ibn Mājid · 1498 CE
  Carry Vasco da Gama’s fleet from Malindi across the Arabian Sea to Calicut on the south-west monsoon, by the pilots’ art that Ibn Mājid wrote down.
• Voyage to Brazil and India — Pedro Álvares Cabral · 1500 CE – 1501 CE
  Make peace and friendship with the King of Calicut, set up a factory in his city and instruct the Christians the Portuguese believed lived in India, as the chronicler Castanheda puts the fleet’s three aims.
• Circumnavigation — Ferdinand Magellan · 1519 CE – 1522 CE
  Reach the Spice Islands by sailing west.
• Voyages to Canada — Jacques Cartier · 1534 CE – 1542 CE
  Find, for King Francis, lands said to hold gold, and perhaps a passage to Asia.
• Descent of the Amazon — Francisco de Orellana · 1541 CE – 1542 CE
  Find food downriver for Gonzalo Pizarro’s starving expedition and bring it back.
• Circumnavigation — Francis Drake · 1577 CE – 1580 CE
  Raid Spanish possessions and find new routes.
• Northeast passage voyages — Willem Barentsz · 1594 CE – 1597 CE
  Find a sea route to China north of Russia, round or past Novaya Zemlya.
• Exploration of New France — Samuel de Champlain · 1603 CE – 1616 CE
  Observe and map the St Lawrence for the fur trade, then found a post on it and push west with Indigenous allies.
• North American voyages — Henry Hudson · 1609 CE – 1611 CE
  Find a northern passage to China, for the Dutch East India Company in 1609 and for London merchants in 1610.
• Search for the southern continent — Abel Tasman · 1642 CE – 1643 CE
  Find out for the Dutch East India Company how far the South-land reached and whether a passage led across the southern ocean to Chile.
• Kamchatka expeditions — Vitus Bering · 1725 CE – 1742 CE
  Find, on Peter the Great’s orders of 1724–25, where the coast north of Kamchatka joins America; then, on the second expedition, reach and chart the American coast.
• The first French naval voyage round the world — Louis-Antoine de Bougainville · 1766 CE – 1769 CE
  Hand the French settlement in the Falklands to Spain, then cross the Pacific between the tropics to the East Indies and carry the French flag round the world.
• First Pacific voyage — James Cook · 1768 CE – 1771 CE
  Observe the transit of Venus and search for the southern continent.
• Second voyage — James Cook · 1772 CE – 1775 CE
  Settle whether a great southern continent exists in temperate latitudes, keeping as near the South Pole as possible while sailing round the globe.
• The voyage of the Boussole and the Astrolabe — Jean-François de La Pérouse · 1785 CE – 1788 CE
  Complete the Pacific chart left unfinished by Cook, and survey its coasts for trade and science.
• The open-boat voyage to Timor — William Bligh · 1789 CE
  Bring eighteen men, cast adrift in a 7-metre launch, to the nearest European settlement alive.
• Survey of the Pacific Northwest — George Vancouver · 1791 CE – 1795 CE
  Take back the Nootka territory from Spain and settle whether a Northwest Passage opens on the Pacific coast.
• The circumnavigation of Australia — Matthew Flinders · 1801 CE – 1803 CE
  Chart the whole coast of New Holland and determine whether a strait divides the continent.
• Voyage to the South Pole and Oceania — Jules Dumont d’Urville · 1837 CE – 1840 CE
  Push as far south as the ice allows, and survey the islands of Oceania on the way.
• The Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic — James Clark Ross · 1839 CE – 1843 CE
  Find the South Magnetic Pole and build a worldwide record of magnetic observations.
• Lost Arctic expedition — John Franklin · 1845 CE – 1848 CE
  Complete the Northwest Passage.

Deep sea

• The half-mile dives off Bermuda — William Beebe and Otis Barton · 1930 CE – 1934 CE
  Lower a steel sphere half a mile into the open Atlantic and describe what lives there.
• Trieste's first deep dives — Auguste Piccard · 1953 CE – 1958 CE
  Prove that a bathyscaphe of his own design could carry a crew to great depth and bring it back unaided.
• Calypso in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean — Jacques Cousteau · 1955 CE
  Finish the work begun on the 1954 campaign and build up important photographic archives, on a voyage from Marseille through the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Assumption Island.
• Challenger Deep dive — Jacques Piccard · 1960 CE
  Take the US Navy’s bathyscaphe Trieste, under Project Nekton, to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point of the ocean.
• The search for USS Thresher — Trieste (the Thresher search) · 1963 CE
  Find, photograph and identify a nuclear submarine lost with all hands at 2,560 metres.
• The Galápagos Rift hydrothermal expedition — Jack Corliss and the Alvin team · 1977 CE
  Dive on the temperature anomalies found the year before and prove that hot water circulates through the ridge.
• The JIM walk off Oahu — Sylvia Earle · 1979 CE
  Carry a scientist to the sea floor in an atmospheric suit and release her to work untethered.
• Finding and diving the Titanic — Robert Ballard · 1985 CE – 1986 CE
  Find the wreck of the Titanic, which earlier sonar searches had missed, in a search area of about 100 square miles south of Newfoundland, by Woods Hole's figure, and return the next year to explore it with a crewed submersible and a robot.
• The 1987 Titanic recovery dives — Nautile · 1987 CE
  Dive the wreck from the support ship Nadir and recover objects from the debris field, under a contract that forbade their sale.
• The search for the Bismarck — Argo and Jason (Ballard's Bismarck search) · 1989 CE
  Find the wreck of the battleship Bismarck, sunk in 1941 far out in the Atlantic west of France, after a failed first search in 1988, and film it without disturbing it.
• The Deepsea Challenger solo dive — James Cameron · 2012 CE
  Take a purpose-built vertical submersible to the bottom of the Challenger Deep and work there.
• The Five Deeps Expedition — Victor Vescovo · 2018 CE – 2019 CE
  Survey and then dive the deepest point of each of the five oceans within a single year.

Air

• The transpolar flight of the Norge — Umberto Nobile · 1926 CE
  Fly from Svalbard across the North Pole to Alaska and see whether any land lies in the unexplored polar basin.
• New York to Paris, alone — Charles Lindbergh · 1927 CE
  Fly non-stop from New York to Paris alone and win the Orteig Prize.
• Around-the-world flight — Amelia Earhart · 1937 CE
  Fly a Lockheed Electra around the world as near the equator as possible, some 27,000 miles by Earhart’s count, with Fred Noonan navigating.

Moon

• Luna 3 flyby — Luna 3 · 1959 CE
  Photograph the far side of the Moon.
• Luna 1 flyby — Luna 1 · 1959 CE
  Strike the Moon, carrying Soviet pennants.
• Luna 2 impact — Luna 2 · 1959 CE
  Strike the Moon with Soviet pennants aboard.
• Ranger 7 impact — Ranger 7 · 1964 CE
  Televise the Moon's surface up to the moment of impact, at least ten times sharper than photographs from Earth.
• Luna 9 landing — Luna 9 · 1966 CE
  Land softly on the Moon and send pictures from its surface, after eleven failed Soviet attempts.
• Surveyor 3 landing — Surveyor 3 · 1967 CE – 1969 CE
  Land in the Apollo zone east of Surveyor 1, photograph the surface, measure its bearing strength and work a surface sampler from Earth.
• Apollo 8 lunar orbit — Apollo 8 · 1968 CE
  Fly the command and service modules, without a lunar module, into orbit around the Moon and back: the first crewed flight to the Moon.
• Apollo 11 — Neil Armstrong · 1969 CE
  Land humans on the Moon and return them safely.
• Lunokhod 1 traverse — Lunokhod 1 · 1970 CE – 1971 CE
  Land a remote-controlled rover in the Sea of Rains and drive it from Earth for three lunar days, testing the soil and its chemistry along the way.
• Luna 16 sample return — Luna 16 · 1970 CE
  Land in the Sea of Fertility, drill out a sample of lunar soil and return it to the Soviet Union without a crew.
• Apollo 17 landing — Apollo 17 · 1972 CE
  Land two astronauts, one of them the geologist Harrison Schmitt, in the valley of Taurus–Littrow for three days of field geology, while Ronald Evans surveys the Moon from orbit: the last Apollo landing.
• Chang'e 4 far-side landing — Chang'e 4 · 2018 CE – 2019 CE
  Land on the far side of the Moon, in the South Pole–Aitken basin, and explore it with a rover, talking to Earth through the Queqiao relay satellite.
• Chandrayaan-3 landing — Chandrayaan-3 · 2023 CE
  Demonstrate a safe, soft landing at a high southern latitude of the Moon, a rover drive and experiments on the surface, four years after Chandrayaan-2's lander crashed.

Mars

• Mariner 4 flyby — Mariner 4 · 1965 CE
  Photograph Mars from close range and measure its atmosphere and magnetic field.
• Mariner 9 global survey — Mariner 9 · 1971 CE – 1972 CE
  Enter orbit and map the surface of Mars, taking on the mapping planned for the lost Mariner 8 as well as its own study of changes over time.
• Viking 1 landing in Chryse Planitia — Viking 1 · 1976 CE – 1982 CE
  Land safely on Mars, photograph the surface and test the soil for life.
• Viking 2 landing in Utopia Planitia — Viking 2 · 1976 CE – 1980 CE
  Repeat the Viking experiments at a second site farther north, where the team hoped for more water.
• Pathfinder and Sojourner at Ares Vallis — Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner · 1997 CE
  Prove a low-cost way of landing on airbags and drive a small rover between rocks.
• Spirit traverse in Gusev crater — Spirit · 2004 CE – 2010 CE
  Look for rocks shaped by water on the floor of a crater that may once have been a lake.
• Opportunity traverse on Meridiani Planum — Opportunity · 2004 CE – 2018 CE
  Read the layered rock of a plain where orbiters had detected haematite.
• Phoenix at the northern plains — Phoenix · 2008 CE
  Dig into the arctic ground of Mars and find out whether there is ice in it.
• Curiosity traverse in Gale crater — Curiosity · 2012 CE – 2026 CE
  Find out whether Gale crater was ever able to support life, and read its layered mountain.
• InSight station in Elysium Planitia — InSight · 2018 CE – 2022 CE
  Listen to marsquakes and measure the crust, mantle and core of the planet.
• Perseverance traverse in Jezero crater — Perseverance and Ingenuity · 2021 CE – 2026 CE
  Seek signs of ancient life in a river delta and set aside samples for a return to Earth.
• Zhurong traverse in Utopia Planitia — Zhurong · 2021 CE – 2022 CE
  Drive south across a northern plain and sound what lies beneath it.