The bloody space race to Mars has begun!
They call it the World of Robots.
The planet inhabited only by machines... thirty or more mechanical objects that run around
or that went around through its sands, and that orbit or orbited above its very thin
atmosphere...
Some destroyed before they even began, others that walked and dug for years before running
out of luck, energy and time.
We're talking about Mars, of course... the great lure of our conquest cravings, the scientific
dream of generations of astronomers.
And the race to Mars has become so tumultuous in recent times that it can now be defined
as a real siege...
Right now, in fact, there are three missions in flight to the Red Planet.
And they would have been even four if technical impediments in recent months had not postponed
the departure of the European probe.
Three missions that will arrive all in February.
Let's see how, and especially who!
Every two years is the year of Mars.
The optimal alignment between the Earth and the Red Planet, in fact, occurs every 26 months
or so, when the ideal "launch window" opens to get there in just a few months.
In May 2018, for example, NASA's Insight mission took off, in March 2016 the European ExoMars
probe, and so on.
This year, however, there have been three probes (and should have been four if at the
last moment there had not been the forfeit of the joint Europe-Russia mission) launched
to Mars during the 2020 launch window, opened in July!
A crowding never seen before, due not only to the obligations imposed by the gravitational
navigation, but also to precise political choices.
By now space is no longer only a field of technological innovation, but it is transforming,
more and more rapidly, in an element of economic and strategic importance.
The many private companies that have entered the sector of telecommunications satellites,
launch systems or orbital infrastructures, are a tangible sign of the changes taking
place.
If billionaires such as Musk, Bezos or Branson are committed to capture the future "space
markets", it is not surprising that several countries are deploying the best technologies
to gain a "place among the stars".
Elon Musk wants to create a colony on the red planet to make humanity a "multi-planetary
species" and the United Arab Emirates do not hide the ambition to build a "Martian city"...
perhaps the interplanetary traffic of these days is the first sign of how the colonization
of Mars is becoming a real social and political project.
Returning to the news, on July 19 departed from the Tanegashima Space Center, in Japan,
the probe Hope (in Arabic, Al Amal): the first Martian mission of the United Arab Emirates.
On July 23, the Chinese mission Tianwen-1 was launched, and on July 31 the Mars 2020
Mission, USA, lifted off from Cape Canaveral.
.
The history of the space race by the Emirates is very recent.
The launch of their first satellite into Earth orbit dates back to 2009, while it was only
in 2014 that a specific Space Agency was created; an initiative that in 2019 brought an astronaut
from the Emirates to fly with the International Space Station.
Now, a further step forward and another ambitious goal: if all goes according to plan, the Hope
probe will enter the orbit of Mars on February 9, 2021.
It will then begin to study the atmosphere through the use of three instruments: a high-resolution
digital camera, an infrared spectrometer and an ultraviolet spectrometer.
The probe, a kind of weather satellite, is designed to study the planet's climate on
a global scale, both on daily and seasonal timescales.
It will also measure the distribution of hydrogen and oxygen in the outer atmosphere, trying
to deepen the mechanisms that lead these two gases to disperse rapidly in space.
The studies will help to understand the causes that have made the Martian atmosphere so thin
as not to allow water to exist in a liquid state.
If successful, the Emirates spacecraft will join six other orbiters from the United States,
Europe and India that are currently surveying Mars from orbit.
The idea of promoting a mission to Mars did not come from scientific circles, but from
the government of the Emirates itself, which wanted to "celebrate the fiftieth anniversary
of the country, inspire young people, and lead the Emirates towards a knowledge-based
economy".
And the mission is already bearing its first fruits, with the establishment of five new
degree courses in scientific subjects and a growing enthusiasm for space on the part
of children.
Hope does not stand as an isolated initiative, but as the first stage of the Mars 2117 program
launched by the Emirates three years ago with the (ambitious) aim of establishing a human
settlement on Mars within the next 100 years.
And like the Emirates, China, with the mission Tianwen-1 (name that means "Questions to the
Sky") is on the way to its first Martian exploration.
Without forgetting, however, that in 2012 one of its probes destined for Mars in a joint
mission with the Russian Phobos-Grunt, the Yinghuo-1, failed to leave Earth orbit and
crashed later in the Pacific Ocean.
Regarding the Tianwen-1, the Chinese government has been as usual very little information
and all that is known comes from published articles and reports of the state media channels
that do not provide for example details on the budget or on the precise place where the
probe will land on the planet.
After the failure of 2012, China has achieved important results in the space race; such
as in 2013 when (third country in the world after the United States and Russia) landed
on the Moon with the Chang'e-3 lander and rover, or in 2019 when the Chang'e-4 lander
and rover were the first in the world to visit the side of the satellite not visible from
our planet.
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Compared to the journey to the Moon, the one to Mars is a thousand times longer, but despite
the possible greater difficulties, China has prepared for the occasion a mission with the
same characteristics, consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, equipped with a total
of 13 scientific instruments.
The details on the instrumentation are not many.
It is known, however, that the orbiter will bring in addition to high and medium resolution
cameras, a magnetometer, a spectrometer to analyze the composition of the soil and a
radar for the subsoil.
In April, two months and a half after the arrival in orbit (scheduled for mid-February),
the probe will detach the lander that will descend with the rover (240 kg, a couple of
meters long).
The latter will explore with cameras, radar to investigate below the surface, spectrometers
to analyze the composition of the soil and rocks, in search, it seems, of clues about
life, both past and present.
To touch the ground without problems, the lander is equipped with parachutes, retrorockets
and airbags, but the operation is not without risk: the gravity of Mars is more than twice
that of the Moon and, unlike the Moon, the planet also has an atmosphere that, although
tenuous, has an important role in the attitude of a probe landing.
Once on the Martian soil the rover, weighing about 200 kg, will begin to explore independently
the surroundings, while the orbiter, which will also act as a communication channel,
will rotate around the planet for at least an entire Martian year.
The expected duration of the mission is one Martian year (equal to 687 Earth days), while
the rover, powered by solar panels, has an expected operational life of 90 Martian days
(the Martian day, said Sol, is 24 hours and 37 minutes).
The rover is expected to rest in the Utopia Planitia, a vast flat region in the northern
hemisphere, which, with an estimated diameter of 3300 kilometers, is one of the largest
impact basins in the solar system.
In 1976, the Utopia Planitia was the endpoint of NASA's Viking 2 mission, but perhaps its
most interesting aspect is that in 2016, thanks to information gathered by the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter mission, the U.S. space agency announced that it had discovered a large amount of water
in the form of ice in the region's subsurface.
The challenge for China is among the most daunting.
Landing on the Red Planet is very difficult... throughout the history of space exploration,
a good half of the Martian missions have in fact ended in disaster.
But if the challenge is successful, China will consolidate its role as a great space
power.
Future plans include the construction of a new space station and, in the next decade,
a new Martian adventure to bring back to Earth some rock samples.
After eight years of preparation, finally, took off also the NASA Mars 2020 mission,
which risked being postponed due to technical problems and the lockdown of the past months
due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Perseverance is the fifth U.S. rover that will land on Mars.
And if the first four - Sojourner in 1997, Spirit and Opportunity in 2004 and Curiosity
in 2012 - were designed for the exploration of the planet, the one that started on July
31 (and should arrive on Mars on February 18, 2021) will instead have the ambitious
task of identifying and collecting rock samples that a future recovery mission will then bring
back to Earth in a decade.
Its purpose will also be to characterize the climate and geology of the planet and to search
for traces of microbial life in the past of Mars.
Perseverance is a six-wheeled rover, three meters long, very similar to that Curiosity
that for nine years is still exploring the Gale crater.
NASA's goal was to save money by using the same design with some changes, but failed
to do so as the cost of the mission rose to $2.7 billion, almost $360 million over budget
due to problems encountered in the development of some of the instruments.
Such as the Sample Caching System, which has the task of drilling autonomously the rock
of Mars, extracting samples and then hermetically sealing them in absolutely sterile tubes,
that is completely devoid of any organic material of terrestrial origin that could alter future
analysis.
In terms of technology, it is the most complicated and sophisticated mechanism that has ever
been built, tested and prepared for a spaceflight.
The collected samples are then transferred inside the rover, to be finally deposited
at the storage site.
The site chosen for the rover's landing is the 45-kilometer-wide Jezero Crater, just
north of the Martian equator, and more specifically the area that was once home to a lake and
river delta.
The area offers a rich variety of geological landscapes suitable for collecting samples
that might contain signs of past life.
And engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have already mapped
out several possible routes around the delta, on the order of about 15 kilometers in length.
Among the innovative tools of the mission, it should also be noted the Ingenuity Mars
Helicopter that will have the purpose of making the first flyover of the planet, a challenging
undertaking if you consider that the Martian atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than
Earth's one.
Still bad news instead from Europe, which for the second time in a row had to postpone
the departure of ExoMars, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and
Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) to send on Mars rover ESA “Rosalind Franklin” and
the Russian lander “Kazachok” (cossack).
The mission should have started from the cosmodrome of Bajkonur aboard a Russian Proton rocket
during the launch window last summer; instead, due to yet another postponement will be forced
to wait for a date between August and October 2022.
Which will result in the lander descending to a region in the northern hemisphere called
Oxia Planum no earlier than the summer of 2023.
Unfortunately, continuous delays in the development of some components, problems of interfacing
with the Russian electronic systems and, finally, the ongoing epidemic, have once again left
on the ground this mission, designed even in 2005 and that should have even started
already in the launch window of 2018...
It's a pity not to have seen it start together with the other missions!
Also because there was a lot of anticipation to see in operation the large drill that mounted
on the rover would have to drill the soil of Mars to a depth of two meters.
Rosalind Franklin would have been the first Martian rover to be able to collect samples
at such great depths, where it is thought that there could be life forms hiding to escape
the sterilizing action of ultraviolet rays.
Let's hope it can at least get there in 2023.
If you liked this video, you will surely also appreciate the others we published on the
same topic: Perseverance on Mars: splendid mission, but
never ending controversy Have we overcome the Curse of Mars?