Here is the Mars missions that are up to date.  At the bottom is the Climate Orbiter and then it goes to the most recent at the top.  I didn't want to use the ones before the Climate Orbiter because they are irrelevant to our research.  As you can see starting from the Climate Orbiter that the mission that follow almost all have had something go wrong, so maybe they correlate somehow.  We should look further into it to have some examples that help prove our research on if NASA is doing anything different.

Missions to Mars

Mars has historically been unfriendly to Earth’s attempts to visit it. More missions have been attempted to Mars than to any other place in the Solar System except the Moon, and about half of the attempts have failed. Some of these failures occurred because Mars was the first planet Earth attempted to explore, and the early exploration attempts taught us many lessons that have made subsequent missions more successful. But many failures have occurred relatively recently, proving again and again that space exploration is very, very difficult. But since 1996, Mars exploration has undergone a Renaissance, with data from four orbiters and four landed missions developing a revolutionary new view of Mars as an Earth-like world with a complex geologic history.

Active missions: Curiosity - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity - Mars Exploration Rover Spirit - Mars Express - 2001 Mars Odyssey

Future missions: ExoMars - Maven - Mangalyaan

Past missions: Phobos-Grunt - Yinghuo-1 - Phoenix - Mars Exploration Rover Spirit - Mars Polar Lander - Nozomi - Mars Climate Orbiter - Mars Pathfinder & Sojourner - Mars 96 - Mars Global Surveyor - Mars Observer - Phobos 2 - Phobos 1 - Viking program - Mars 4, 5, 6, & 7 -Mars 2 & 3 - Mariner 9 - Kosmos 419 - Mariner 8 - Mars 1969a &b - Mariner 6 & 7 - Zond 2 -Mariner 4 - Mariner 3- Mars 1 - Korabl 11 & 13 - Korabl 4 & 5

Active Missions

Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory) (MSL)

Roving Mars (NASA)

Launch: 26 Nov 2011

Mars arrival: 6 Aug 2012

Curiosity is the next generation of rover, building on the successes of Spirit and Opportunity. It is twice as long and three times the weight of the Mars Exploration Rovers. It landed in Gale crater.
Links: All Plantary.org Coverage - NSSDC - Wikipedia - JPL - UnmannedSpaceflight

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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

In orbit at Mars (NASA)

Launch: August 12, 2005

Mars arrival: March 10, 2006

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is searching for evidence of past water on Mars, using the most powerful camera and spectrometer ever sent to Mars. Its cameras are also helping in the search for landing sites for future Mars rovers and landers.
Links: All Planetary.org Coverage - NSSDC - Wikipedia - JPL - HiRISE images - MARCI weather reports

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Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity

Currently roving across Mars (NASA)

Launch: July 7, 2003

Landing: January 24, 2004

Opportunity landed in Meridiani Planum at 354.4742°E, 1.9483°S, immediately finding the hematite mineral that had been seen from space by Mars Global Surveyor. After roving more than 33 kilometers, Opportunity arrived at the 22-kilometer-diameter crater Endeavour, a target it is currently exploring.
Links: Planetary Society MER Updates - NSSDC - Wikipedia - JPL - UnmannedSpaceflight

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Mars Express and Beagle 2

Currently in orbit at Mars; failed lander (ESA)

Launch: June 2, 2003

Mars arrival: December 26, 2003

Five days before its arrival Mars Express successfully pushed off the tiny, 30-kilogram Beagle 2 geochemical lander. Although it had functioned successfully throughout cruise, the lander was never heard from again. Beagle 2 may have landed too hard, the victim of an unexpectedly thin atmosphere at the time of its arrival.

Mars Express successfully entered orbit on December 26 and immediately began returning stunning, 3D, color images. Mars Express has detected surprising concentrations of methane and evidence for recent volcanism on Mars. Its radar sounder, MARSIS, was deployed late in the mission due to spacecraft safety concerns, but is functioning well.
Links: NSSDC - Wikipedia - ESA - HRSC images

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2001 Mars Odyssey

Currently in orbit at Mars (NASA)

Launch: April 7, 2001

Mars arrival: October 24, 2001

2001 Mars Odyssey is capturing images of the Martian surface at resolutions between those of Viking and Mars Global Surveyor, and is making both daytime and nighttime observations of the surface in thermal infrared wavelengths at resolutions higher than ever before. It has detected massive deposits of water lying below Mars’ surface in near-polar regions and widespread deposits of olivine across the planet, indicating a dry past for Mars. The MARIE instrument measured the radiation environment at Mars to determine its potential impact on human explorers, and found them to be 2 to 3 times higher than expected. 2001 Mars Odyssey also serves as a communications relay for Opportunity.
Links: All Planetary.org Coverage -  NSSDC - Wikipedia - JPL - THEMIS images

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Future Missions

ExoMars

Future orbiter, lander, and rover (ESA)

Launch: 2016 and 2018

Links: ESA - Wikipedia

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MAVEN

Future Mars orbiter (NASA)

Launch: between November 18, 2013 and December 7, 2013

Arrival: September 2014

MAVEN, which stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, will provide first-of-its-kind measurements and address key questions about Mars climate and habitability and improve understanding of dynamic processes in the upper Martian atmosphere and ionosphere.
Links: NSSDC - Wikipedia - NASA - Twitter

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Mangalyaan

Future Mars orbiter (ISRO)

Launch: scheduled for November 27, 2013

Arrival: 2014

Details are sketchy about India's first Mars mission. The Indian Space Science Data Centre describes it as a technology development project. Newspaper articles state that it will carry a 24-kilogram payload of instruments in an elliptical orbit (500 by 80,000 kilometers). Another article states that it will be launched on a PSLV into Earth orbit that must slowly be pumped up to prepare for a Mars escape trajectory.
Links: No ISRO web page exists. Watch nasaspaceflight.com and unmannedspaceflight.comfor news updates.

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Past Missions

Phobos-Soil (Phobos-Grunt)

Failed sample return mission to Phobos (Russia)

Launch: January 15, 2012

Phobos-Grunt's modified Fregat upper stage of failed to ignite after launch, and the spacecraft crashed into the southern Pacific ocean.

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Yinghuo-1

Future Mars orbiter (China)

Launch: January 15, 2012, piggybacked on Phobos-Grunt

Yinghuo-1 crashed with Phobos-Grunt.

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Phoenix

Successful lander (NASA)

Launch: August 4, 2007

Mars arrival: May 25, 2008

Last communication: November 2, 2008

Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole to study the water ice found close to the surface there. Its arm dug trenches into the soil and delivered samples to sophisticated chemical analysis instruments.

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Mars Exploration Rover Spirit

Currently roving across Mars (NASA)

Launch: June 10, 2003

Landing: January 3, 2004

Contact lost: March 22, 2010

Spirit landed on Mars within Gusev crater at 14.5718°S, 175.4785° E. The initial panorama showed a rock-strewn site similar to Pathfinder’s. Spirit had to rove several kilometers across Mars and into its extended mission before it found evidence for past water. It was hobbled by one stuck wheel for many years and finally became stuck in fluffy sand.

You can read a detailed history of Spirit's mission in our MER Updates section.

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Mars Polar Lander

Failed Mars lander & 2 penetrators (NASA)

Launch: January 3, 1999

Attempted landing: December 3, 1999

When Mars Polar Lander arrived at Mars, it turned its antenna away from Earth to prepare for its entry into the Martian atmosphere. This was the last time controllers heard from the spacecraft. A review board determined the most likely cause for the loss of mission was a faulty software system that may have triggered the retrorockets to turn off early, causing the lander to crash. The spacecraft had carried The Planetary Society’s Mars Microphone to Mars, the first privately funded hardware provided to a planetary mission. Two microprobes, Amundsen and Scott, were piggy-backed on the lander and expected to separate just before the lander entered the atmosphere. However, no signal was ever received from the probes.

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Nozomi ???

also known as Planet-B

Failed Mars orbiter (ISAS)

Launch: July 3, 1998

Mars flyby: December 14, 2003

Originally scheduled to arrive at Mars in October 1999, Nozomi failed to gain enough speed during an Earth flyby on December 21, 1998. The spacecraft also used much more fuel than predicted. A looping trajectory was developed, including two more Earth flybys, to return Nozomi to Mars for orbit insertion in December 2003. But on April 21, 2002, a powerful solar flare damaged Nozomi’s computer. As a result, Nozomi’s hydrazine fuel froze during the long interplanetary trek and mission controllers were unable to place it into orbit. Nozomi flew by Mars at a distance of 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), and is now in a 2-year orbit around the Sun.

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Mars Climate Orbiter

Failed Mars orbiter (NASA)

Launch: December 11, 1998

Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, 1999, when a mathematical conversion error placed the spacecraft too close to Mars at the time of orbital insertion. Mars Climate Orbiter carried a few re-flown instruments from Mars Observer, marking the second failures for those experiments.