Landing on Mars is very difficult. Only the United States has controlled the landing of a spacecraft on Martian soil, eight times since 1976. NASA’s InSight and Curiosity rovers are still operating today. Six spacecraft are exploring Mars from orbit: 3 Americans, two Europeans and one Indian.
Unlike the two other Mars missions launching this month, China has tightly controlled information about the program — even withholding any name for its rover. National security concerns led the US to curb cooperation between NASA and China’s space program.
In an article previously published this month in Nature Astronomy, mission chief engineer Wan Weixing said Tianwen-1 would enter orbit around Mars in February and look for a landing site on Utopia Planitia, a plain where NASA has detected imaginable evidence of underground ice. Wan died in May of cancer.
Then, an attempt would be taken to land in April or May, according to the article. If all goes well, the sun travels the length of a 240 kilogram (530 lb) golf cart for about 3 months and the orbiter for two years.
Although small compared to the perseverance of 1,025 kilograms (2,260 pounds) of the length of an American car, it is almost twice as giant as the two rovers China sent to the moon in 2013 and 2019. Perseverance lasts at least two years. Training
This Mars launch season, which takes place every 26 months when Earth and Mars are closer, is very busy.
The Amal spacecraft, or Hope, which will orbit Mars and still land, is the first interplanetary project in the Arab world. NASA’s Perseverance rover is as follows.
“At no other time in our history have we noticed anything in what is happening with those 3 exclusive missions to Mars. Each is a marvel of science and engineering,” space Foundation executive director Thomas Zelibor said at an online roundtable before this one. Week.
China’s direction to Mars suffered some obstacles: a Long Mars-5 rocket, nicknamed “Fat 5” due to its bulky shape, could be unveiled before this year. The coronavirus pandemic has forced scientists to paint from home. In March, when the tools were to be transported from Beijing to Shanghai, 3 team members drove 12 hours to deliver them.
As China joins the United States, Russia, and Europe in creating a global satellite navigation system, experts say it seeks to outperform the United States in area exploration.
Instead, Cheng of the Heritage Foundation said China is in a “slow race” with Japan and India to identify itself as the power of the Asia area.