The Red Planet is about to become less crowded. Three separate missions to Mars launched by the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will reach their destination this month, after taking flight in just 11 days from each other in 2020.
Unmanned missions promise to provide new information for Earth-related scientists, intent on uncovering the mysteries of the solar system and scanning Mars for signs of extraterrestrial life, as well as improving our collective understanding of the cosmos.
But projects on Mars are also the latest landmark in the new geopolitical space race, experts say, as the world’s most powerful nations are once again competing with each other for domination beyond the Earth’s surface.
“Space competition is heating up,” Christopher Impey, a professor of astronomy and associate dean at the College of Science at the University of Arizona in the United States, told Al Jazeera. “Three missions to Mars in a month are unprecedented.”
“Collectively, they will add a lot to our knowledge of the Red Planet,” Impey added.
Each of the companies has “different goals and capabilities,” Impey said. US and Chinese missions, which come against the backdrop of an intensified geopolitical rivalry between the two nations, include plans to land exploratory rovers on Mars, while the UAE focuses on its top-down surveillance through an orbiter.
The UAE mission will be the first to reach Mars orbit on Tuesday, ushering in a new era of space exploration for the Gulf nation.
The great space “hope” of the UAE
Named Al Amal, the Arabic word for “hope,” the United Arab Emirates Space Agency spacecraft is its first foray into space.
Al Amal will spend 687 days – a year equivalent to a year on Mars – gathering information about the Martian atmosphere and analyzing the planet’s meteorological patterns over the four seasons.
By doing so, it can shed light on the mystery of Mars’ transformation from a warm, humid world – one with an atmosphere thick enough to support liquid water on its surface and potentially capable of sustaining life – to the cold, barren planet it is today. .
Matthew Siegler, a researcher at the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute in the United States, said the probe’s findings could help determine when life-threatening conditions existed on Mars.
“The Martian atmosphere is currently too thin for liquid water to be stable at the surface,” Siegler told Al Jazeera. “By carefully measuring the atmosphere, we can better model how long ago the atmosphere would have been suitable for liquid surface water and therefore potentially suitable for life.”
In addition to promising to improve our understanding of Mars ‘past, craft research could also guide scientists’ planning for future missions and improve their understanding of whether the fourth planet from the sun has the potential to receive human visitors – or , long-term settlers, the head of the Mars mission in the United Arab Emirates, Omran Sharaf, told National Geographic.
The UAE probe will gather information about the Martian atmosphere and analyze weather patterns of the planet in all four seasons [File: Jon Gambrell/AP Photo]
But the UAE mission also has strong earthly aspirations.
Wendy Whitman Cobb, an associate professor of strategy and security studies at the US Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, told Al Jazeera that the company has a basic motivation to “stimulate internal interest in space exploration.”
“The United Arab Emirates is essentially using this mission to stimulate its own space program,” she said, noting that space exploration “continues to be a means by which countries not only demonstrate their technical capabilities but compete for global prestige.”
“Although [the UAE] designed and paid for this mission, it was built in the US and launched in Japan, so it needs to develop talent internally to start doing these kinds of things more regularly, ”added Whitman Cobb.
A “projection of Chinese power”
China’s national space administration has closely maintained the objectives of its inaugural mission to Mars, called Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven.”
What is known is that the spacecraft is expected to launch into orbit on February 10, eight days before the spacecraft guided by the US space agency NASA is scheduled to arrive on the Red Planet with its Perseverance rover.
Although China’s spacecraft will defeat NASA on arrival on Mars, its landing component is not scheduled to attempt to reach the planet’s surface first. Instead, the plan is to keep it in orbit for two or three months, attached to the cruise ship that kept it through outer space before it finally arrived.
It is anticipated that the Chinese lander will finally make its dangerous descent to Utopia Planitia – Mars’ largest impact crater – sometime in May, after which it will launch a six-wheeled rover robot powered by solar energy.
The rover, which weighs about 240 kg (£ 529), will spend the next three months scouring the surface of the Red Planet, examining its geology and looking for pockets of water beneath the surface, which could contain signs of life.
Meanwhile, the cruise ship carrying the rover to Mars will remain in orbit, studying the planet’s atmosphere using a suite of remote sensing instruments.
The orbiter, which will also be combined with the high-speed data relay rover, is designed to operate for 687 days, reflecting the Martian calendar and the length of the UAE probe.
China’s national space administration has closely maintained the objectives of its inaugural mission to Mars, called Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven.” [File: Zhang Gaoxiang/AP Photo]
If all goes well, the mission will make China the second country – along with the US – to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars and conduct a long-term research mission to the planet’s surface.
“The Chinese mission also demonstrates not only that they are serious about space, but that they are as capable as the United States,” said Whitman Cobb, noting that both countries’ expeditions have a “political tone.”
“Although competition cannot be the main driver of these missions, it is safe to say that it is part of the calculation,” she added.
Impey, of the University of Arizona, provided a more direct assessment.
“It’s a new space race,” he said. “The China-US rivalry has been a successor to the Soviet-American rivalry since the early space age.”
“China is very ambitious, with plans for a monthly base and, ultimately, a base on Mars and its own space station,” Impey added. “I spend a lot, and success in space is directly related to national pride and the projection of Chinese power.”
Perseverance promises “huge” scientific rewards
China may be hot, but the United States is still the leader in exploring our solar system.
Todd Harrison is the director of the aerospace security project and a member of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, DC.
Harrison told Al Jazeera that the United States has maintained “a substantial advantage in space exploration and space technology,” but “China and other nations are working hard to catch up.”
The United States has successfully landed on Mars eight times since its first adventure in 1976 and is still the only country to put astronauts on the moon during the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972.
NASA’s six-wheeled Perseverance rover is set to attack on February 18 near the Jezero equatorial crater. Weighing 1,025 kg (2,260 pounds), Perseverance with nuclear power and the size of the car is the most sophisticated explorer ever sent to another planet and will spend at least two years on Earth on Mars, gathering information and essentially , samples of rocks and soil.
Provided that the NASA spacecraft is sailing safely on a terrifying final descent to the surface, known to engineers as “seven minutes of terror” – a reference to the time it takes for a ship to descend from the atmosphere of Mars – the agency’s mission could prove that the most important to date in terms of human understanding of Mars.
“Perseverance is the first step in a multi-mission attempt to return samples from Mars to Earth,” Casey Dreier, senior lawyer and space policy adviser at The Planetary Society, a US non-governmental organization, told Al Jazeera .
“This has been a goal of the scientific community on Mars for about 50 years and probably the most ambitious robotic project ever attempted,” he added. “The scientific benefit could be huge.”
Mars has been historically hostile to spacecraft, with about half of all missions on the planet failing. [File: Joe Skipper/Reuters]
Siegler added that NASA’s effort to collect billions of years of Martian material and transport it to Earth for analysis is “the best way to test past life” on the planet.
“The rover will land to collect evidence in an area where scientists believe liquid water has been present for a period in Mars history, when life could have existed,” he explained. “It’s also heading for an incredibly interesting water feature – a delta where a river once flowed into a lake, which is one of the most unique geological features we’ve ever explored on Mars and a target.” main for hunting the signs of the past life. . ”
Armed with a range of scientific tools and devices, including a detachable miniature helicopter, Perseverance will help NASA prepare for future human missions to Mars, according to the US space agency.
The mission, it seems, is a forerunner of many US activities that NASA plans on the planet in the years and decades to come.
Wider, said Whitman Cobb, symbolizes the country’s effort to maintain its current “advantage” in outer space.
“Hope for a better tomorrow”
On this month’s rainy day of Mars exploration, there are clear concerns among experts about the potential for the militarization of space, especially when it comes to the US-China rivalry.
These three missions could shed light on the mystery of Mars’ transformation from a warm, humid world – one with an atmosphere thick enough to support liquid water on its surface and potentially capable of supporting life – on the cold, barren planet it is today. [File: Hubble Telescope Image via Reuters]
But there are also fragile hopes that these efforts outside this world could give the two nations a chance to work together.
“Cooperation is a political choice,” Harrison said. “As long as we do [the US and China] we have common goals of exploration, which we make clear, then we should be able to find a way to cooperate with each other, despite our disagreements in other areas. ”
“National pride certainly plays a role in profile space missions like these, but I think the ultimate engine is a quest to explore and learn more about our solar system,” he added.
Taken together, Impey said, these stays on Mars by the US, China and the UAE promise to provide “a big step forward” in our ability as humans to carry out complex space missions, as well as “a sign that one day , we can master the entire solar system and it lives on Earth ”.
At a time when life on Earth remains mired in the chaos and tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic, the gaze of science expands both the edges of what we know and what we believe is possible, promises to be particularly conscious, Siegler said.
“Exploration always brings hope – the hope of a better hand,” he said. “We can all continue to do great things even in the face of a global challenge.”