The race to Mars: Why the U.S., China and the UAE are all blasting off to the red planet

Article content material

Our photo voltaic system has two planets harbouring what could be deemed life. The primary is Earth, residence to greater than 8 million animal species, together with the one studying this story. The second is Mars, the one planet within the universe recognized to be populated completely by robots.

Article content material

The second is about to get much more crowded.

Previously week, spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates and China lifted off for a six-month journey to the pink planet. On July 30, NASA’s newest mission will comply with. If all goes effectively, subsequent February Mars will play host to a further two orbiters, one lander, two rovers and a helicopter. It’s the most important flotilla ever to make the journey, an armada of exploration.

Spaceships from Earth have been attempting to make the harmful journey to Mars for 60 years, with spotty success, at the very least within the early going. The primary try in 1960 led to a launch failure. So did 4 of the subsequent 5. (The fifth suffered communications failure.)

It took till 1965 for NASA’s Mariner to make the primary profitable flyby. Orbit wouldn’t be achieved till the Soviet Union launched Mars 2 in 1971. That very same 12 months, Mars 3 made the primary “comfortable touchdown” — that’s the place you don’t crash — however managed to ship again solely a partial image earlier than contact was misplaced lower than two minutes later.

Article content material

Issues slowly received higher. In 1976, NASA’s twin Vikings soft-landed and despatched again photos and different information. In 1997, the toaster-sized Sojourner grew to become the primary rover on one other planet, working for nearly three months. 2004 introduced Spirit and Alternative, golf-cart-sized autos that lasted for a few years. And in 2012 the Curiosity rover, the dimensions of a small automobile, touched down and continues to be driving, with out a lot as an oil change.

There are at this second 4 different lifeless rovers on the pink planet, in addition to 9 landers (NASA’s Perception is the one one nonetheless working), a number of crash websites, and 15 orbiting satellites, of which six are nonetheless functioning. It’s a busy place, however there’s loads of floor to cowl. Though Mars is only a fraction of Earth’s measurement, its lack of oceans means the whole space is sort of precisely that of the land on our planet – take away half of Canada (or two Mexicos) from Earth’s land space, and also you’ve received Mars.

Article content material

Every of the most recent missions has a unique scientific and political goal. For the Emirates Mars Mission, success would imply the primary go to by a West Asian, Arab or Muslim majority nation. It could additionally mark the fiftieth anniversary of the nation’s independence from Britain. Past that, the Hope orbiter would spend at the very least two years finding out the Martian local weather, an advanced system that features ice caps, water vapour and clouds within the skinny, largely carbon dioxide environment.

China’s Tianwen-1 mission is much more bold, comprising an orbiter, a lander and a rover. Taking its identify from Tianwen (The Heavenly Questions), an epic poem written greater than 2,200 years in the past by Qu Yuan, the orbiting spacecraft will embrace a high-resolution digital camera, ground-penetrating radar, a spectrometer, a magnetometer and several other particle analyzers, with the purpose of teasing out extra details about the floor, subsurface and environment.

Article content material

The unnamed rover – China just lately introduced a world marketing campaign to present it a reputation – will roll off the lander in a area of Mars referred to as Utopia Planetia, the place scientists consider there’s a subsurface reservoir of ice containing as a lot water as Lake Superior. It too will carry cameras and radar in addition to climate monitoring gear. The rover is predicted to perform for 90 days, however earlier autos have carried out higher than projected, partially as a result of occasional wind storms serve to blow mud off the photo voltaic panels.

Then there’s NASA’s latest mission, scheduled to elevate off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July 30 at 7:50 a.m. ET. (The launch window extends till mid-August.) Hitching a journey on the underside of the rover Perseverance is a miniature helicopter referred to as Ingenuity. Weighing in at simply 1.8 kg (or lower than 700 grams within the decrease gravity of Mars), Ingenuity goals to be the primary plane to fly on one other planet.

Article content material

Perseverance appears to be like loads like Curiosity however carries a brand new vary of devices, together with extra cameras and the flexibility to cache rock samples for eventual return to Earth on a future mission, tentatively deliberate for a 2026 liftoff. Orbital mechanics imply that a great launch window for Mars opens as soon as each 26 months, which is why so many ships are leaving on the identical time.

Within the meantime, Russia is planning a 2022 launch of ExoMars. The mission was initially scheduled for launch this 12 months till issues with parachutes and electronics satisfied scientists to carry out extra checks.

The 2026 mission will embrace an orbiter, one other lander with a small rocket that may return the samples to earth, and one other rover to make the switch of samples. Mars could also be a while away from human guests, however its robotic inhabitants continues to swell.