Watch Mars Probes NASA Perseverance, China Tianwen-1, and UAE Hope Land

This illustration shows the events that occur in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month trip that NASA’s Perseverance rover takes to Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land safely on Mars on February 18, 2021. NASA / JPL-Caltech

In less than three weeks, on February 18, NASA’s last Mars rover, Perseverance, is expected to land on the Red Planet. At the same time, two other probes, launched by China and the United Arab Emirates, will intercept the orbit of Mars.

Perseverance is the 11th Mars probe launched by NASA and the most sophisticated robot explorer ever sent to space. As of Thursday, the spacecraft was approximately 41.2 million kilometers from its destination and was flying toward Mars at a speed of 2.5 kilometers per second.

“NASA has been exploring Mars since Mariner 4 conducted an overflight in July 1965, with two more overflights, seven successful orbiters and eight landers since then,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Missions Directorate, said Wednesday. . “Perseverance, which was built from the collective knowledge gleaned from these pioneers, has the opportunity not only to expand our knowledge of the Red Planet, but also to investigate one of the most important questions and fascinating stories about the origin of life on Earth. and also on other planets. ”

See also: New space race heats up as three Mars probes from NASA, China, United Arab Emirates

The most exciting part of Perseverance’s arrival will be a seven minute descent involving supersonic inflation of the parachute and the very first self-guided soft landing. once the spacecraft enters the atmosphere of Mars.

The SUV-sized rover will then target an area called the Jezero Crater, which scientists say was once a lake, to look for signs of ancient life and collect samples that will ultimately be sent back to Earth. Once landed, the rover will deploy a small helicopter equipped with a camera, called Ingenuity, to explore the surroundings and identify places of interest for the rover to visit.

Ingenuity is the very first aircraft designed to fly in an alien world. And many things could go wrong. “This will be a Wright Brothers moment for us,” said Bob Balaram of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), chief engineer of Ingenuity. Popular science magazine Friday. “The first flight of an experimental aircraft was back at Kitty Hawk. You can see how far we’ve come to Earth from such a first step. If we are successful, it will be a similar time. “

Although Mars has a similar surface structure and atmosphere to Earth, getting an airplane off the ground is harder than it looks. The temperature in Jezero Crater can drop to as low as -130 degrees Fahrenheit overnight, leaving only a third of Ingenuity’s power usable for flying (the rest must be used to keep the electronics hot enough to operate. )

Eight days before Perseverance’s arrival, the China Tianwen-1 probe, an orbiter-rover combo, is expected to enter orbit on Mars. But the mission won’t attempt to land on the surface for at least a few months, as the Orbiter studies potential landing sites in an impact basin called Utopia Planitia, located near the Viking 2 landing site of the NASA.

And on February 9, the United Arab Emirates’ Orbiter Hope, the first mission to Mars launched by the Middle Eastern country, will enter orbit the planet to begin a two-year Mars study from above.