Planet Mars, the "red planet".
Feb. 8, 2021
Probes from the US, China and the United Arab Emirates will explore the red planet.
Planet Mars, the red planet. Image Credits: NASA/CNES
Traffic becomes more complicated around Mars: for the first time in the history of space exploration, three different missions led by the two powers will reach the red planet in less than 10 days. These are Perseverance (US-EU), Hope (United Arab Emirates) and Tianwen 1 (China)... And one Tesla car from SpaceX.
Thus, in the space of eight days, the three missions will reach the Martian orbit, although at the moment only one will land on its surface.
Hope: the Arab hope
Hope UAE mission walk-through. UAE Space Agency
The Hope is the first space mission headed by an Arab country. The United Arab Emirates has launched it to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of that state.
The probe was launched seven months ago from the Japanese island of Tanegashima, and since then it has traveled 180 million kilometers at a speed of 121,000 km / h in space. After slowing down to 18,000 km / h, the spacecraft is scheduled to enter Martian orbit this Tuesday at 4:57 p.m. Central European Time (CET).
Hope probe. Image Credit: EAU Space Agency
The Arab mission, which can be followed live, will not land on the surface. It is designed to orbit the planet for four years. It weighs 1,350 kilos and has been developed by engineers from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in collaboration with scientists from universities in Colorado, Arizona and Berkeley.
During those four years, the probe will try to collect information to determine "the causes that led to the disappearance of water and the opportunities for life on the red planet."
China reaches Mars
Illustration of Tianwen-1 on Mars. Image Credit: Wikipedia
The second mission will arrive this week. It is estimated that next Wednesday, Tianwen 1, launched on July 23, will begin deceleration maneuvers to enter orbit.
Tianwen-1’s first image of Mars
Video above: The Tianwen-1 mission captured its first image of Mars from a distance of 2.2 million km from the planet. Tianwen-1, China’s first Mars exploration mission with an orbiter, a lander and a rover, is expected to enter Mars orbit on 10 February 2021. The name Tianwen (天問, Questions to Heaven) comes from a poem written by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan. Video Credits: China Central Television (CCTV)/China National Space Administration (CNSA)/SciNews.
The Tianwen consists of two parts. On the one hand, an orbiter that will explore the Martian surface from space. It has a high resolution camera, a radar, a mineral spectrometer, a magnetometer and a particle analyzer.
The second part of the mission is a rover, which is expected to be deposited in May on the Utopia plain, in the northern hemisphere. "The landing site is at the crossroads of several ancient oceans," explains the Chinese space agency ANEC, so "scientists believe that this place has great scientific value and is likely to achieve unexpected results."
The Tianwen-1 Mars rover
Video Credits: China Central Television (CCTV)/China National Space Administration (CNSA)/SciNews.
The Asian country's space agency has at least three other missions in its queue, not counting Tianwen 1: asteroid exploration around 2024, another mission to Mars that returns with samples for 2030 and another that same year that will explore beyond Jupiter.
Perseverance: seven minutes of terror
Perseverance Arrives at Mars Feb. 18, 2021 - Mission Trailer
Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Finally, next week, on Thursday, February 18, the Perseverance mission of the United States will arrive on the planet in collaboration with the European space agency ESA.
The US mission aims to plant its fifth rover, Perseverance, on the planet, which will follow in the wake of Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity.
Image above: Illustration of the arrival of Perseverance to Mars. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Defined by NASA as "the largest, heaviest, cleanest and most sophisticated geological robot ever launched," the rover has six wheels and just over a ton in weight with instruments to study the Jezero crater, Scientists believe that this site, now dry and lonely, it was home to a delta teeming with life millions of years ago. The robot will be dedicated to taking samples in search of traces of microbial activity.
Perseverance grounding maneuvers will be done automatically. A sequence of seven minutes, which NASA calls "the seven minutes of terror", in which the instruments on board will have to program everything to go from 21,000 kilometers per hour to land the six wheels of the robot gently on the sands of Mars.
Image above: This illustration shows the events that occur in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey that NASA’s Perseverance rover takes to Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land on Mars safely on Feb. 18, 2021. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
The probe will brake with the help of the friction entering the atmosphere and, later, with a parachute. The artificial intelligence instruments on board will then start a suitable place to land, and about 20 meters above the ground the lander will begin to lower chains of about seven meters, at the end of which the rover will be hung.
The ship has to land the robot on Mars at a minimum speed, and after that it will move away from the site to crash later. These seven minutes are programmed, and from Earth nothing can be done to change the trajectory or the time of the mission.
SpaceX: The Tesla Roadster and Starman its driver
The Tesla Roadster flies close to Mars, the electric vehicle Tesla and its driver, the Starman mannequin were launched in 2018 in the inaugural mission of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, they did his first close approach to the planet Mars... The Aerospace Company, owned by Elon Musk, published the news on his twitter account. "Starman was last seen leaving Earth and made his first close approach with Mars at 0.05 astronomical units (less than 7.5 million km) from the Red Planet," SpaceX reported... Starman and the Tesla Roadster orbits the Sun once every 557 Earth days, according to the tracking site... Since its launch, the car and its driver have traveled nearly 2.1 billion km in space.
The Tesla Roadster and STAR MAN its driver around Mars. Image Credit: SpaceX
Two years after its launch, Elon Musk's Tesla surpasses the orbit of Mars (60 times the Earth at a speed of 27,775 kilometers per hour), it is expected to fall on Earth, Venus or disintegrate in the Sun... Studies the car will approach the Earth every 30 years where it will receive a gravitational pull that will cause a change in the orbital percentage. Meanwhile Starman will continue to walk through space.
Related article:
NASA’s Perseverance Rover 22 Days From Mars Landing
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2021/01/nasas-perseverance-rover-22-days-from.html
Related links:
Emirates Mars Mission: https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/
China National Space Administration (CNSA): http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html
Mars Perseverance (NASA/ESA): https://nasa.gov/perseverance
SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/
Images (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credits: Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga/Text about SpaceX: Aida M. Crescente Tamaris.
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