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On Sunday, an orbiter built by the United Arab Emirates launched to Mars. Next week, possibly Thursday, July 30, NASA will launch a massive 1.05-ton launch. Perseverance rover towards the red planet.
However, among these missions is China’s first interplanetary spacecraft. With its ambitious Tianwen 1 mission, China will attempt to orbit and land on Mars on its first attempt, then deploy a rover. This is significant, because the typical mode of exploration is to fly over a new world first, then go into orbit, and only then send a spacecraft ashore and potentially move.
China has the benefit of learning from NASA’s exploration of the red planet, of course. Even before Perseverance, NASA has successfully landed eight spacecraft on the surface of Mars for decades.
But it is not easy. The Soviet Union sent multiple landers to Mars, and none survived more than a few seconds on the planet’s surface. Two landing attempts by the European Space Agency have also failed.
The mission is likely to launch early on Thursday, US time, between midnight and 3 amEDT (04: 00-07: 00 UTC) on Thursday aboard a Long rocket March 5 from a spaceport. in Hainan, an island in the South China Sea. Chinese space journalist Andrew Jones estimates that the launch will occur around 45 minutes after the window opens. Following the nation’s practice of generally announcing only launches after successful takeoffs, it seems unlikely that China will provide live coverage of the launch.
Landing like NASA
The mission’s rover has a mass of about 240 kg, which is slightly larger than that of NASA. Spirit and Opportunity rovers, but about a quarter the size of the largest Curiosity and Perseverance rovers
To safely bring this rover to the ground, Aviation week reports that China’s space agency will use a four-stage process. After the lander separates from the orbiter in Mars’ orbit, it will use aerodynamic braking through the thin Martian atmosphere to throw approximately 90 percent of its speed, up to 460 meters / second. After this, a parachute will be deployed for 90 seconds, followed by propulsive braking.
At an altitude of about 100 meters, the lander will travel to inspect the ground, autonomously identifying a safe place to land before settling on the ground. This process has some elements in common with the way NASA put its Curiosity rover on the ground, and Chinese officials have been telling the public to wait “seven minutes of terror,” as NASA described Curiosity’s landing in 2012.
The rover will carry six scientific instruments, including ground-penetrating radar that can image about 100 meters underground, and technology to look for signs of life. China intends for this orbiter and lander to demonstrate technologies that could lead to a sample return mission in the 2030s.
China has attempted to fly a probe to another planet only once, in 2011, as part of the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission to the Martian Moon of the same name. However, this vehicle was unable to reach orbit, so the Asian nation decided to proceed on its own to make further efforts.
