The list of countries who have sent astronauts to space can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The U.S. and Russia did it continually throughout the Cold War, but hardly any other country tried it after. In January of 2012 China became just the third country to put a human into space using their own rocket. But China never sent any spacecraft beyond the bounds of Earth’s moon, and no other country outside of Russia and U.S. sent anything to Mars when a Japanese space probe went up to study the Red Planet.

On this day, July 5, in 1998, a Japanese probe launched from the Kagoshima Space Center Uchinoura to rendezvous with Mars and study the traces of water on the planet’s surface.

The mission profile intended to use the moon as a slingshot to power the spacecraft towards Mars, but positioning for the shot burned up more fuel than planned, and a new mission to send the craft into orbit around the sun was taken up. The remnants of the fuel were burned to keep the probe from crashing into the planet and possibly contaminating it or the Martians with Earth-bound particles.