China’s Mars mission nears orbit of the Red Planet

The Chinese space agency has a penchant for secrecy around its missions. It has shown more openness over the past year, providing live video on state media of the launch of its Chang’e-4 mission to the moon. If it announces a more precise arrival time, we will provide it here.

What will the spaceship do on Wednesday?

Tianwen-1 launched from China last July, taking advantage of a time when Mars and Earth were closest to each other as they traveled around the sun. This allows a relatively short transit between the two worlds.

To catch up with Mars, the spacecraft fired its engines several times, correcting its course so that it could approach the red planet at the correct angle. The last engine fire was on February 5, and the probe returned images of the red planet at a distance of about 1.3 million kilometers.

On Wednesday, the engine will reignite, spending much of the spacecraft’s remaining fuel on a braking maneuver. This should slow it down considerably and allow the probe to be captured by Martian gravity. There, it will spin at a safe distance, joining the other group of robotic explorers in Mars orbit and preparing for this subsequent surface landing attempt.

Could something go wrong?

The history of spaceflight is littered with failed trips to Mars, including a Chinese mission in 2011 that never left Earth orbit after the failure of the Russian rocket it was traveling on. And a few spaceships have stumbled during this final stage of preparation for entering Martian orbit.

For example, in 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter suffered a navigation error – English units were not converted to metric – and the spacecraft burned down in the Martian atmosphere. In 1992, NASA lost contact with its Mars Observer spacecraft a few days before it arrived on Mars, possibly due to a ruptured fuel line. After a Soviet mission in 1974, March 4, failed to fire its retro rockets, the spacecraft moved away from Mars.

Yet the Mars orbit challenge is nothing compared to landing there.

When did China land on Mars?

The orbiter carries a lander and a rover that will make transit difficult to the surface. China says it will attempt to land on Mars in May, but did not specify a date.

Its destination is Utopia Planitia, a large basin in the northern hemisphere that was probably once hit by a meteor, and which was visited by NASA’s Viking 2 lander in 1976. One of the objectives of the Tianwen mission -1 is to better understand the distribution of ice in this region, which future human colonists on Mars could use to sustain themselves.

Landing on the red planet is perilous. Spacecraft descend at high speed, and the low atmosphere does little to slow the path to the ground. The friction of the air always generates extreme heat which must be absorbed or dissipated. A number of Soviet, NASA and European missions crashed. Only NASA has landed intact more than once.

The Chinese spacecraft will spend months orbiting Mars checking systems and choosing a landing point that won’t be too dangerous.

If it lands in one piece, the rover will need a name. After the nominations of people in China, a panel of experts selected 10 semi-finalists. Among them, according to state media, are Hongyi, a Chinese word for ambition and perseverance; Qilin, a hoofed creature of Chinese legend; and Nezha, a young deity considered a patron saint of rebellious youth.

What else has China been up to in space recently?

Since China launched its mission to Mars in July, it has been to the moon and back.

The Chang’e-5 mission took off in November, collected lunar samples, and then brought them back to Earth for scientists to study. It was the first new cache of moon rocks since the Soviet Union’s last lunar mission in 1976.

China’s Chang’e-4 mission, the first to land on the other side of the moon, is still ongoing, and its Yutu-2 rover is still studying the lunar surface more than two years after its launch.

What else is coming to the Red Planet in 2021?

The first robotic probe to arrive on Mars this year was Hope, an orbiter for the emerging United Arab Emirates space agency. He arrived on Tuesday and will embark on a study of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, helping planets understand the meteorological dynamics of Mars.

The third new visitor to Mars will be Perseverance, NASA’s latest rover. It was launched a little later than the other two spacecraft last July and will jump out of Martian orbit, heading straight for the planet’s surface on February 18.

The robotic explorer is said to be NASA’s fifth rover on Mars, and it’s very similar to Curiosity, which is now exploring Gale Crater. The new rover carries a different set of scientific instruments and will explore Jezero Crater, a dried-up lake that scientists say could be a good target for looking for fossilized evidence of extinct Martian microbial life.

The mission will also attempt a new first on the Red Planet: piloting a helicopter in the vaporous atmosphere of Mars. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter will be dropped off by the rover shortly after landing. Then he will attempt a number of test flights in airs as thin as the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere, aimed at demonstrating that Mars can be explored both in the air and on the ground.

What other spacecraft are currently studying Mars?

There are a few people around the red planet.

Six orbiters are currently studying the planet from space. Three were sent there by NASA: Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and MAVEN, which left Earth in 2013.

Europe has two spaceships in orbit. Its Mars Express orbiter was launched in 2003 and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter took off in 2016 and is shared with the Russian space program.

India operates the sixth spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter mission, also known as Mangalyaan, which was launched in 2013.

Two American missions are currently operating on the ground. Curiosity has been on the move since 2012. It is joined by InSight, which has been studying marsquakes and other internal properties of the Red Planet since 2018. A third US mission, the Opportunity rover, expired in 2019 when a dust storm hit it. lose power. .