Editing Mars 6 (section)

== Launch ==
Mars 6 was launched by a Proton-K carrier rocket with a [[Blok D]] upper stage, flying from [[Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 81/23]].<ref name=LL/> The launch occurred at 17:45:48 UTC on 5 August 1973, with the first three stages placing the spacecraft and upper stage into a [[low Earth orbit|low Earth]] [[parking orbit]] before the Blok D fired to propel Mars 6 into heliocentric orbit bound for Mars. The spacecraft performed a course correction on 13 August 1973.

Mars 6's lander separated from the flyby bus on 12 March 1974 at an altitude of {{convert|48000|km}} from the surface of Mars. The bus made a flyby with a closest approach of {{convert|1600|km}}. The lander encountered the atmosphere of Mars at 09:05:53 UTC, slowing from {{convert|5600|to|600|m/s|mph}} as it passed through the upper atmosphere. A parachute was then deployed to further slow the probe's descent, and [[retrorocket]]s were intended to fire during the last seconds before the probe reached the ground.

The spacecraft returned data for 224 seconds during its descent through the Martian atmosphere. However, at 09:11:05 UTC, with the spacecraft about to fire its retrorockets in preparation for landing, all contact was lost. Due to a design flaw, a chip aboard the spacecraft had degraded during the mission, and a large amount of the data which had been returned was unusable.<ref name=NSSDC/><!-- the flyby bus portion of the spacecraft did not land on Mars and remained in long-term heliocentric orbit -->
[[File:Mars map Viking 1 Mars 2 Mars Pathfinder Opportunity Mars 6.png|thumbnail|left|Map of the planet Mars, showing the locations of ''[[Viking 1]]'', [[Mars 2]], ''[[Mars Pathfinder]]'', ''[[Opportunity rover|Opportunity]]'' and Mars 6 (lower centre of the image, near the scale bar).]]
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