Once you begin the Space Program you will have available a basic probe (containing a battery and wide-angle camera), 4 accessible mission areas on Mars and 1 area on Deimos.

Ignoring the technology tree for now, launch a basic probe to each mission. They all have a single Explore task, so as long as the probe is not off-course, you should receive the $.

You only need to do 10 on Mars and 4 on Deimos to complete the 2 main objectives for Terrain Mapping, but the extra $ is worth doing the optionals if you have the patience; 4 in Victoria Crater, 3 in Kaiser Crater, 4 in Lyot Crater, 3 in Gale Crater, and 5 in Deimos.

So long as you have completed the required objectives (and not necessarily the optional), you will find the areas on Mars and Deimos would now tell you that you don't have the required tech.



This is the part where we begin to research new technology, and is also the first place where you can spend all your budget on technology that isn't used for missions yet and be left out-of-pocket.

Firstly, you need to research the Environmental Analysis Station. The reason for this is that it can be used on a probe and will give you a number of new missions for the open Mars areas; 1 in Victoria Crater, 2 in Kaiser Crater, 1 in Lyot Crater, and 2 in Gale Crater.

Open up the tech tree and click on the Environmental Analysis Station in the list on the left. Now when you scroll the tree right you will see some entries highlighted in blue. These are the technologies required to produce the item you selected. In this example, a Low Power Socket System. Blue lines along the bottom of the technology tree will assist with finding the relevant entries to gain the EAS.
Now either do something else for the 2 hours or so or skip-time. Once all the required research is complete you should find some new missions on the map.

There most likely will be one or two with large target circles and others with small ones. You could be like me and try and get a probe to land in exactly the right place for a small target, but again you'll end up with no budget.

Selecting any of the missions should also show a pre-built probe with EAS in the name. This is a good indication that you have all the necessary technology to complete the mission. If Take On Mars makes no suggestion of a pre-built vehicle, then you probably are missing something.

In any case, do the probe EAS missions first to give you an idea of how to use Instruments on vehicles. You will find there is a 3rd HUD button added to the 2 you had on the basic probe. This is the one that enables you to "see" science targets and perform the necessary experiments to earn $. When the HUD says Ready, just click in the area to perform the experiment, which in this case is to Capture Gas.

if, like me, you went ahead and tried to land probes on the small targets, then you would soon discover that they are woefully inaccurate. What is needed is something more... controlled.

Enter the Small Lander.

As we did for the EAS, go to the Technology Development department and click on Small Lander. This will highlight the necessary technology. Go ahead and pay for the research, but remember to go back and check if another level of technology is needed as the highlights only show for those technologies you can currently pay for.

Skip time or what-have-you until you have all the highlighted items for a small lander researched, then head to the map and send a lander to one of the remaining missions...

What's that? You can't? Oh yes. We missed something.

If you go into contruction mode, you'll find that even if you pick the smaller lander chassis, fit the EAS, a couple of cameras and some batteries, you're missing an Antenna... This is because while it's not required for the lander chassis, it is required for the mission. You can check vehicle requirements in the Construction Lab. Red is mandatory, orange is optional.

Again, if you have all the technology, Take On Mars should already have a suggested build for you in the mission map screen.

Go back to research, click on Low-Gain under ANTENNAS and research the necessary technology. Once you have that, you should now be able to launch a Small Lander: EAS vehicle for the remaining missions.

You'll soon have no more missions available on the 4 Mars areas so we need to research some new things.

At this point you might think you have the budget to go with a large lander or zero-g probe, but it's unlikely. Go ahead if you wish though, this is only a guide after all.

If you want to play it a bit safer, the next rung on the technology ladder would be the Soil Analysis Probe and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer; or Probe and APXS as they are called for short.

Getting these 2 instruments will open up more missions but, like before, there is a "hidden" requirement. In this case, these instruments need to reach the ground, so we have to add the Robotic Arm to our Small Lander. This has 3 mounting points. One for each of the new instruments, and one for the camera so you can see what you are doing.


Before long you'll be irradiating Martian soil and poking it with a metal stick. You can decide which by clicking on the instrument name in the dropdown list from the top right of the HUD and selecting your choice.

A word of warning. The mission parameters that are set are very much based on which instruments you have researched. As has been determined, the soil scoop requires either the Large Lander or Large Rover, although it is a relatively cheap instrument in itself. You should not research this until you have the Large Rover and plenty of budget to pay for Large Lander missions.

You probably would have noticed during the small lander missions that there are other science tasks possible in the area where your vehicle landed, but you can't get to them unless you can move your lander.

There is a way to do that. If you have enough fuel left to make the "hop", holding Spacebar would bring up the Retro Thrusters control panel, where the top choice is manual control, and the other choice is to Fly to Waypoint.

The autopilot guided flight does require that the lander is assigned to a main mission, not one of the tasks within a mission. If it is not assigned correctly that option won't appear in the control panel.



Once you have exhausted your fuel, or if the tasks are further apart, a small rover is the next best thing. And not the fluffy pet kind.

As before, research only the technology necessary to put a Yes next to Small Rover in the list, then see what missions have opened up. If TKOM does not offer a suggested vehicle build, make your own and see what mission requirements are missing.

You should also take this opportunity to research the 3 Passive Instruments; Environmental Monitoring Station (EMS), Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN). Doing so will open up a lot of mission tasks you can do with your rovers.

Given the quite large number of Major tasks now required for mission completion, and the optional Minor tasks, it would benefit you greatly to become familiar with the Mission Waypoint System and Waypoint Filtering, as well as how they are displayed in the HUD.

The important thing to remember is that mission waypoints for all the tasks or the selected task are shown in the Standard HUD as coloured icons with distance.

Yellow drills are science markers; red cameras are photo markers; and green wheels are explore markers. And here you see the same area but with the Camera HUD enabled

or the the Instrument HUD.

Normally, the Instrument HUD shows red text if the currently selected Instrument is a different type, however it also currently shows red text for science that uses a passive instrument, even if that instrument is fitted to the rover.

The waypoints can be filtered by using the Navigation Waypoints Display settings under NAV in the top left menu, and also by whether you have chosen a Task under the Mission in the MIS page of the same menu.

While connected to your vehicle, the Mission Information panel and Standard HUD are probably the most important tools available to you for determining how to progress your mission and claim the big dollars for your budget.

Very likely your Standard HUD contains quite a number of coloured crosses, which I've already explained are mission/task waypoints. Some of these markers are not associated with any mission available from the Map and are randomly generated tasks for the area you are in. I've mentioned the yellow, red and green ones before, but there are also white wheel markers. These are mission start markers. Going to one of these will trigger an optional mission that could have it's own tasks.

Now, by going to the NAV panel and choosing to turn on the Filter by Mission, the additional markers disappear and I'm left with just the ones for the Mission this vehicle is assigned to.

They can be further filtered by clicking on To Tasks and choosing a specific task for the mission. By using the Next Task or Previous Task buttons, you can cycle through all the outstanding tasks you have for this mission, although some times those buttons are not usable. This is due to there being a defined sequence of tasks required by the mission.