Egyptians already aware of Mars having a backward or retrograde motion at times by giving another name Sekded-ef-em-khekhet (The One Moving Backwards). The Babylonians referred to its as Nergal, the Star of Death, and the Greeks too associated it with warfare and bloodshed.
Astronomers carefully charted the motion of Mars across the sky even before the advent of the telescope in 1609.
By 1610, Galileo reported that Mars can show a gibbous phase, which subsequent observers verified.
In 1659, Christiaan Huygens sketched the dark triangular feature now known as Syrtis Major. From his observations, Huygens concluded that the rotation period of Mars is about 24 hours. The exact Martian days is 24 hours 37 minutes 22.6 seconds.
Major advances in understanding of Mars began in 1830 during a close approach between Mars and Earth, The first complete map of Mars was derived from observations during this time and published in 1840.
Mars and Earth very close in 1877 resulting in a surge of new discoveries. Principal among these was the discovery of Mars’ two small moons, Phobos and Deimos by Asaph Hall.
NASA began its attempt to reach Mars in the early 1960s, achieving incredible technological success on 14-15 July 1965 when spacecraft Mariner IV passed by the planet at a distance of 9600 km and snapped some the first blurry close-up pictures of the Martian surface, reveling its true nature.
Planet of Mars: History of discovery
