Within a month from now, three spacecraft will be launched near Mars: Emirati Hope Rover, NASA Rover and the Chinese mission Tianwen-1 are all going to Mars to find signs of life.
2021 will be a busy year for space explorers. Some exciting missions are expected to reach their destination. Three of them will arrive by next month.
United Arab Emirates
Their destination is the same and inspiration is also the same. They are all going to Mars to find signs of life. It will be the first Emirati Hope Orbiter to reach Mars – the first Arab mission to Mars.
This unmanned mission took off from Tanegashima, Japan on 20 July 2020. It is part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Arab Emirates this year and is expected to reach the vicinity of Mars on 9 February. Once there, the mission will study the Martian atmosphere. It is equipped with an infrared spectrophotometer to measure the planet’s lower atmosphere, a high-resolution imager to provide information about ozone and a UV spectrophotometer to measure oxygen and hydrogen levels.
China
The next flight will be the first Chinese mission on Mars on 10 February. It is a long march of five missiles launched from the equatorial island of Hainan last year and is called Tianwen, or “Question to Heaven”. The mission has three goals: to carry out an investigation into orbit around Mars, landing on the surface, and then launching a robotic spacecraft to perform the analysis.
Li Chenkai, deputy commander of the Chinese Academy, Tianwen-1 Mars investigation project, said, “The probe is currently flying at a speed of about 23 kilometers per second, or two million kilometers per day.” The relative velocity of the Earth is now around 21 kilometers per second or 1.8 million kilometers per day. ” space technology.
NASA
After Tianwen-1, NASA’s consecutive rover will be launched from Cape Canaveral in July 2020. The mission is to land the vehicle on Mars. Once it arrives by February 18, the rover will explore a site known as Jezero Crater – officially a lake – for signs of ancient life.
Approximately 40 samples of rock and oil will be collected and placed in tubes ready to return to Earth for another mission.
