Science
China is moving rockets to the 1st Mars mission of the nation
(AP) China has moved a rocket into a position to launch a rover to Mars in one of the next three missions to the Red Planet, one from the United States and the other from the United Arab Emirates.
Long March-5 carrier rocket is China's heaviest launch vehicle and has been used experimentally three times, but never with payload. Dubbed Tianwen-1, China's first mission to Mars is to land a rover to collect science data.
The rocket is due to blasting off the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern island province of Hainan at the end of July or the beginning of August, according to state media reports on Friday quoted by the China National Space Administration.
The mission is one of the most ambitious yet for China's space program, which has progressed steadily since the launch of its first crewed flight in 2003. Since then, astronauts have been sent to an experimental space station, construction has started on a bigger, more permanent site, and a probe has landed on the less explored far side of the moon.
This summer's trio of missions has made the most sweeping effort to search for signs of ancient microscopic life while exploring Mars for future astronauts.
Timelines for these missions are overwhelming, and the countries involved are trying to make the most of a one-month window in which Mars and Earth are preferably aligned on the same side of the sun, reducing travel time and fuel consumption. The window opens only once every 26 months.
Preparations began in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, which partially caused Europe and Russia to cancel their plans to send a life-seeking rover to Mars this summer.
Each spacecraft will fly over 480 million kilometers (300 million miles) to Mars next February. In the meantime, they will spiral out beyond the Earth's orbit to align with the more distant orbit of Mars around the Sun.
The U.S. is sending over a six-wheeled car rover called Perseverance to collect rock samples that will be returned to Earth for study in around a decade. The start date has been set for the period from July 30 to August 15.
The UAE spacecraft, called Amal or "Hope" in Arabic, is an orbiter designed in collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder and is scheduled to be launched from Japan on Monday. It will be the first interplanetary mission of the Arab world.
Scientists want to know what Mars was like billions of years ago, back when it had water sources that could have supported tiny life forms before it became a frozen world today.
So far, the U.S. has been the only country that has successfully landed a spacecraft on Mars eight times. There are two NASA landers, Knowledge and Interest. Six other spacecraft are exploring the planet from orbit: three from the United States, two from Europe and one from India.
China's last attempt at a Mars mission in collaboration with Russia ended in failure in 2011. The strong military relations and relative confidentiality within China's space program have limited its prospects for cooperation with those of the US and other countries.
Source: Associate Press
