Rank 12 centres Mars 3 — Georgi Babakin's Lavochkin mission that achieved the first soft landing on Mars on 2 December 1971 while its orbiter companion mapped the planet from above. Launched atop Proton-K from Baikonur in May 1971, the lander descended into Ptolemaeus crater with four petal panels and carried the tiny Prop-M rover — a box on skis meant to roll off the footpad and relay data across the surface. A global dust storm likely ended the lander's transmission after roughly twenty seconds, yet the orbiter continued returning imagery and the landing itself marked humanity's first successful Mars touchdown. International Space renders the petal-landed hero, Prop-M rover at footpad, dust-storm linocut sky, and dense text archive exactly as the master PNG dictates.