On January 29, 1989, a Soviet space probe named Phobos 2 arrived in orbit around Mars. [‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com](https://www.space.com/39251-on-this-day-in-space.html)

This was the last space mission launched by the Soviet Union. Its primary purpose was to study Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Its journey to the Red Planet took about 6 and a half months, and it spent the next two months taking pictures of the two moons and gathering data on Mars' atmosphere. It brought along two small landers to drop on Phobos, but mission control lost contact with the spacecraft before those landers made it to the Martian moon.