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A probe From United Arab Emirates “Esperança” was placed in the orbit of Mars this Tuesday (2/9), reported those responsible for the mission, which makes the country the first Arab nation to reach the red planet.
“To the people of the United Arab Emirates, the Arab and Muslim nations, we announce the successful arrival to orbit of Mars. Praise God,” said Omran Sharaf, project manager for the mission.
In total, the Red Planet receives three terrestrial space probes. Tomorrow (10) will follow the Chinese Tianwen-1 (Astronomy 1) and, on the 18th, the North American Perserverance (Perseverança). The three probes, two of which carry rovers (exploration vehicles), have very different missions, but with a common goal: to better understand the planet.
The probes were launched about seven months ago, a period when the distance between Earth and Mars was the shortest in the next two years, and now February is finally the time to place them where they were programmed.
Each probe had to travel a long stage, some 400 million kilometers between the two planets, without the teams knowing the result of their creations. One of the most critical phases of the mission is to block the probes from reaching the planet too fast, which can mean automatic destruction on the red ground.
According to the Portuguese expert Miguel Gonçalves, this type of race is the incessant search for life on Mars. “This race to Mars is explained by the mysteries of the past, the present and most likely the future, that Mars continues to dispute in the scientific community. It always leads us to that question that science fiction authors are very accustomed to, which is astrobiology, that is, the eventual life on Mars. “
The probes, many are already there and others have not been able to survive since the 1960s, they seek to unravel what has happened geologically on the planet and if there is still life underground. “Because perceiving the evolution of a planet is also perceiving the evolution of our own planet,” says Gonçalves.
Mission success cannot be guaranteed. More than half of the probe’s trips to Mars have failed. In fact, only the United States has managed to land devices, eight times since 1976, and some with delicate or very heavy instruments, such as the Sojourner -1997, Spirit and Opportunity – 2004 and Curiosity – 2012 rovers.
The mission of this probe is not to land on the surface, but to orbit the planet for a whole Martian year (687 days). The main mission will be to monitor the climate cycles of the planet. Within this investigation, Hope will look for data that can somehow provide insight into why Mars is losing hydrogen and oxygen in space.
Although this is not the first probe to orbit Mars, there are 14 satellites that do so, the EMM probe is one more milestone and a symbol of the UAE’s scientific progress in this field, being the fifth nation to reach the planet, coinciding with the 50a. anniversary of your birth.
“It is a very interesting mission,” says Miguel Gonçalves. “We are talking about the first Arab nation to reach another body in the solar system. This is a mission that has a modest scientific load, and Hope will be in a very high orbit to see the upper atmosphere of Mars.”
The space mission has yet another peculiarity, international cooperation, with a lot of American technology and engineering, and the launch by a Japanese rocket. It also serves a future goal: Arab leaders want to inspire young people to study this promising area, in addition to preparing the country for another economy.
Tianwen 1
After two missions, with excellent results, to the far side of the Moon, China now wants to be present on Mars with a small scientific vehicle.
Launched on July 23, 2020, the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission aims, as it did on the Moon, to place an exploratory vehicle on the Martian surface. But even though the probe carrying the rover arrives on February 10, the lander is not expected to enter Mars until May. The Chinese science team will analyze the best place to land.
Although many details about Tianwen are still unknown, the central objectives have already been revealed and include the creation of a geological map of Mars and the location of possible deposits of water ice. A task that will be carried out in orbit and that will determine the place where the 240 kg rover will be sent, equipped with six instruments, including two cameras and a radar.
For Miguel Gonçalves, although the investment remains modest, China continues to invest significantly in its space exploration program: “With a very powerful budget. I remember that the budget of NASA, the US space agency, is around 20,000 million dollars. The Chinese space program, according to data from 2017, had a budget of 11,000 million dollars.
The Chinese mission is already the second attempt to reach Mars. The first was in 2011, when Yinghuo was trapped in Earth’s orbit after the malfunction. Rover Perseverance, USA
“After the first rovers demonstrated their capacity, resistance and effectiveness, both in results and in objectives more than exceeded on the hard Martian surface, NASA continues to bet on sending more teams with a vast itinerant laboratory.
With this bet, added to Spirit and Curiosity, the Americans continue to search for biological traces on Mars. Without missing the opportunity, they sent another sophisticated scientific SUV.
To reach its goal, the US space agency wants to land the new rover in Jezero crater, a place believed to have concentrated water some 3.5 billion years ago.
Perserverance is, of all the models already sent by NASA, the heaviest (1,050 kilos), but also the best equipped, with 23 high-resolution multimedia cameras and a drill to collect soil samples.
This armored vehicle, proof of the demanding Martian meteorology, is also equipped with microphones, which promise to scientists and all those interested in this type of exploratory mission to record and send the first sounds from the surface of another planet to Earth. It will also carry a 1.8 kg helicopter (Ingenuity), which will fly over several areas of Mars, transmitting the signal to the rover, which will send the data and images to Earth.
* With information from RTP – Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, AFP and Agência Brasil
