China, US, UAE poised for blast-off in race to land probe on Mars

Above: Emiratis gathering at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai last year. The United Arab Emirates' Hope Probe - the first interplanetary mission by an Arab country - launches on Wednesday. It is looking for additional signs of past life on Ma
Above: Emiratis gathering at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai last year. The United Arab Emirates' Hope Probe - the first interplanetary mission by an Arab country - launches on Wednesday. It is looking for additional signs of past life on Mars. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Above: Engineers and technicians examining the descent stage of the Mars 2020 spacecraft at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a 2019 file photo.
Above: Engineers and technicians examining the descent stage of the Mars 2020 spacecraft at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a 2019 file photo. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

PARIS • "We have lift-off, we have lift-off!" The summer race to land a craft on Mars is off to a hot start.

Space probes from three countries - the Hope Probe (United Arab Emirates), Tianwen-1 (China) and Mars 2020 (the US) - are all in position, hoping to take advantage of the period of time when the Earth and Mars are nearest: a mere 55 million km apart.

The neighbouring planets come this close once every 26 months - a narrow "launch window" based on their relative positions in space.

Space agencies from all the three nations plan to send rovers to the Red Planet to look for additional signs of past life and potentially pave the way to - someday - step foot on its surface.

The journey will take about six months.

The UAE' Hope Probe - the first interplanetary mission by an Arab country - launches on Wednesday.

China is planning to send its inaugural Mars probe, a small remote-controlled rover, between July 20 and 25.

By far the most ambitious project, the US Mars 2020, has a planned launch date of July 30.

The probe - called Perseverance - is expected to spend one Mars year (or about 687 Earth days) on the planet's surface collecting rock and soil samples that scientists hope will shed light on past life forms that may have inhabited the faraway planet.

The aim of subsequent missions will be to bring those samples back to Earth.

A fourth planned launch, the European Union-Russian ExoMars, has been postponed until 2022 due to the Covid-19 crisis.

Several dozen probes - most of them American - have set off for the Red Planet since the 1960s.

Many never made it that far, or failed to land.

The drive to explore Mars flagged until the confirmation less than 10 years ago that water once flowed on its surface.

"It's the only planet where we've been able to detect past signs of life, and the more we learn about it the more hope there is," said astrobiologist Michel Viso at CNES, France's space agency. "It feels like something exciting is happening, and people want to be a part of it."

India and the EU are also setting their sights on a Mars landing.

And Japan plans to send a probe in 2024 to explore the Martian moon Phobos.

As with the moon missions, different countries have invested heavily - in reputation and cash - on Mars exploration, with each looking to find their specific niche, Dr Viso noted.

The holy grail, he added, is getting boots on the ground: "This represents the 'ultimate frontier' of space exploration."

So far, only the US has done detailed feasibility studies, and in a best-case scenario achieving that goal will take at least 20 years.

A swathe of Mars lander missions over the past five decades have met with varying degrees of success since the Soviet Mars 2 and 3 probes launched in 1971.

Nasa's Curiosity lander, which arrived on the planet in 2012 and is designed to determine whether its environment was ever able to support microbial life forms, remains operational on the surface - as does the Insight lander, which arrived in 2018.

The UAE is thinking even longer term.

The oil-rich Gulf nation plans to establish a "science city" on Earth that will reproduce Mars' atmospheric conditions, with the goal of establishing a human colony on the Red Planet around 2117.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 11, 2020, with the headline China, US, UAE poised for blast-off in race to land probe on Mars. Subscribe