Two missions to Mars went into orbit around the fourth planet in the solar system this week: the Hope spacecraft built by the United Arab Emirates and launched by Japan from the Tanegashima Space Center, on February 9, and the Tianwen-1 (“celestial questions”) Launched by China from the country’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, on February 10th.
A third mission will arrive on Mars next Thursday, a pair of Mars 2020 rover and a helicopter, named Perseverance and Ingenuity, respectively, launched by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
All three missions took advantage of the favorable connection between Earth and Mars, which occurs approximately every 26 months, when the two planets reach their closest approach. The “launch window” varies slightly depending on the exact route taken to get to Mars, but allowed the three spacecraft to arrive just seven months after launch, after a mediocre mission. short of about 493 million kilometers.
As soon as the spacecraft arrives near Mars, they have to make an orbital insertion move, one of the most difficult tasks in space exploration. A spacecraft travels to Mars (and the other planets) at distances of tens of kilometers per second, and they need to brake quickly and accurately to be captured by the planet’s weight and enter orbit. Mars’ gravitational attraction is also much weaker, about 62 percent less than Earth’s. In addition, the 22-minute round trip required for radio signals between Earth and Mars means that the entire process has to be automated.
These challenges have meant that, since the Soviet Union took advantage of this start – up window 61 years ago, more than half of the 49 Mars missions have failed. Only in the last 25 years has failure been successful.
In fact, many lessons about space travel have been learned in this hard process. Hope’s mission, in close collaboration with NASA, is the second time a country’s first mission to Mars has safely entered orbit, following the success of India’s Mangalyaan probe in 2014. Tianwen-1 is China’s second attempt to reach Mars, and the first time the country has built and manned the spacecraft mostly by itself (previous joint missions with Russia have failed escape from Earth orbit).
Satellites used in previous messages inform the scientific goals of each trade. Hope is designed to study the daily and seasonal weather cycles on Mars, and is slated to carefully study the atmosphere of the red planet for a full Martian year (about two years on Earth). The main mission is to understand why Mars lost so much of its atmosphere to space, a process that still continues today. Secondary goals include mapping out a fuller picture of the more severe weather cycles, such as the planet’s many dust storms.
Hope has three instruments in addition to his communication series. The Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) is a high-resolution camera designed to image water, ice, dust and aerosols in the Martian atmosphere at six different waves. The Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) examines the temperature characteristics of ice, water smoke and dust. The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) uses ultraviolet light to provide a better understanding of the Mars thermosphere, as well as the oxygen and hydrogen content of the planet.
While these instruments are very common, they fill a gap in understanding Martian atmosphere, which has never been studied in such a complete way. The mission objectives were determined in consultation with the Mars Exploration Program Study Group, an international team led by NASA that coordinates Mars missions from multiple countries.
The Hope team also received assistance in the design and manufacture of the spacecraft and its instruments from the laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at Colorado Boulder University, Arizona State University, and the University of California, Berkeley. They received further support from the Indian Space Research Group, which shared its experiences with the Mangalyaan mission.
Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, deputy project manager for the mission, told CNN’s Becky Anderson about the success of their orbital deployment, “I am grateful for the accomplishment of the spacecraft, and what made this mission amazing, Becky, it ‘s not only the 200 Emiratis working on this, but the 450 people from different continents, and from different backgrounds and beliefs. This is truly an international endeavor, and this is what science must be. This is what a study is. “
Tianwen-1 is a more sophisticated spacecraft, which includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover. The orbiter and rover are expected to be launched in May or June this year after approaching the orbiter around 265 kilometers to map the landing site in Utopia Planitia. The high-resolution camera on board Tianwen-1 is capable of achieving a resolution better than two meters at that height.
If the rover succeeds, China will be the third country to land on Mars, following the Soviet Union and the United States.
Other instruments on board the Tianwen-1 orbiter include a medium resolution camera, a magnetometer, a spectrometer, a subsurface radar, and two different grain analyzers. One of the materials analysts, the Mars Energetic Particle Analyzer, has been working since six days after the spacecraft launched in July last year to study the environment between Earth and Mars, and as that changes in Martian orbit. This is similar to the location of the Radiation Assessment Detector aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover.
The rover has its own set of instruments, including a ground-penetrating radar, another magnetic field detector, a weather station, a navigation camera and two devices to study planetary geology. The rover is slated with solar panel power to use these platforms to chemically study Martian soil, looking for possible signs of modern life and (so likely). It will add to the growing body of knowledge about the past and the inhabitable capacity of the red planet.
As part of the 90-day scheduled mission, the rover will also invest in rock and ground samples for a future sample return mission, which China has slated for the 2030s. If this 90-day mission is anything like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the rover will still take data and do science even then.
Even if the rover does not land, both the Tianwen-1 and Hope are already successful, joining the consul of satellites that have been continuously exploring Mars for the last 20 years. These include the still-operating Mars Odyssey and Mars Express, launched in 2001 and 2003 respectively, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mangalyaan, MAVEN and ExoMars.
If the rover goes to the surface, it joins the Curiosity rover and InSight lander as part of the ongoing surface exploration of the planet, which has been ongoing since 2004. The whole mission is get support from teams in Argentina, France. and Austria.
Indeed, the international cooperation necessary for each mission has not stopped the spread of nationality from the governments of both China and the UAE. Contrary to the comments made by Al Amiri, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Governor of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid called Al Maktoum that the mission was only a victory for “Arab civilization.”
In addition, this entire spacecraft was designed to reach Mars around the country’s 50th anniversary. And the success was projected on the side of the Burj Khalifa, the skyscraper that symbolizes the severe social and economic inequality in the region and around the world, and which had construction costs of more than seven so much more than the paltry $ 200 million spent on the Hope mission.
Similar comments were made at the time of the launch of Tianwen-1 by Chinese officials. Bao Weimin, senior director of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Group, said China’s exploration of Mars was “a testament to the country’s scientific and technological strength.”
It is also a measure of the military capability of China, which think tanks and the Pentagon in the US are painfully aware of. If a country can launch a spacecraft into orbit to Mars and even land, it is more than capable of launching missiles with sharp precision against targets on its own planet. Major scientific achievements at the same time exacerbate international conflict and extend them into outer space.
Such competitions also limited China’s mission. There is no reason why a second rover on the Sustainability scale, which is many times the mass and complexity of the Tianwen-1 rover, could not be placed on the rocket launched from Wenchang, except to NASA staff are barred from being so close. collaborating with their Chinese peers. It has meant, both for its Moon and Mars passengers, that China would literally have to restart wheels to drive on those other worlds.
The UAE launching a spacecraft with support from the United States and Japan is another sign of international tension, this time a U.S. attack against Iran. The UAE has traditionally been used by Iran, a few miles across the Strait of Hormuz, to send and receive goods sent and received by other countries, usually the USA. There is no doubt that the close cooperation between the United States and the UAE on Iran’s ruling circles, surrounds the already remote country.