Mars Probe

The Mars Probes were a series of spacecraft launched by Great Britain to explore the planet Mars, beginning in the late 1960s. The missions were coordinated from Space Control. Mars Probe spacecraft included Mars Probe 6, Mars Probe 7, Mars Probe 13, and Mars 97 (the last one named for its year). (TV: The Ambassadors of Death, PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy, The Dying Days)

In 1997, one of the Probes hung from the ceiling in the Science Museum. (PROSE: The Dying Days)

Behind the scenes
The Mars Probe missions are ignored by the Doctor Who television story The Waters of Mars, which referred to the human colony founded in 2058 as being made up of the "very first humans on Mars". Further complicating matters, an on-screen obituary in The Waters of Mars mentions that the captain of the Bowie Base One colony, Adelaide Brooke, along with two other unidentified astronauts, had already landed on Mars when Adelaide was 42 in the year 2041.