Mariner 9 lifts off for Mars on an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral

On May 30, 1971, NASA's Mariner 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas-Centaur rocket, bound for Mars. It arrived that November to find the entire planet swallowed in the largest dust storm ever observed — surface invisible, scientists waiting. When the dust finally settled months later, what emerged in 7,329 images rewrote the map of the Solar System: volcanoes the size of states, a canyon system stretching the width of the continental United States, and dried riverbeds that had no business existing on a world once thought to be dead…