Three nations are launching separate spacecraft to Mars, this week.
Three countries viz. the United States, China and the UAE are sending unmanned spacecraft to the red planet in quick succession, beginning this week. The effort is to seek signs of ancient microscopic life while scouting out the place for future astronauts or should I say, spacemen? China and the UAE are looking to join the elite club.
The US is dispatching a six-wheeled rover the size of a car, named Perseverance, to collect rock samples that will be brought back to Earth, for analysis, in about a decade.
The UAE spacecraft is named Amal, which is Arabic for 'hope'.
China readies Tianwen-1 Mars rover to blast off from Hainan island, off China's south coast.
Each spacecraft will travel 483 million kilometers before reaching Mars next February. It takes six to seven months, at the minimum, for a spacecraft to loop out beyond Earth's orbit and sync up with Mars' more distant orbit around the sun.
Scientists want to know what Mars was like billions of years ago when it had rivers, lakes and oceans that may have allowed simple, tiny organisms to flourish before the planet morphed into the barren, wintry desert world it is today.
The three nearly simultaneous launches are no coincidence : The timing is dictated by the opening of a one-month window in which Mars and Earth are in ideal alignment on the same side of the sun, which minimizes travel time and fuel use. Such a window opens only once every 26 months.
Mars has long exerted a powerful hold on the imagination but has proved to be the graveyard for numerous missions. Spacecraft have blown up, burned up or crash-landed, with the casualty rateover the decades exceeding 50%. China's last attempt in collaboration with Russia in 2011, ended in failure.
Only the US has successfully put a spacecraft on Mars, doing it eight times, beginning with the twin Vikings in 1976. Two NASA landers - InSight and Curiosity - are operating there. Six other spacecraft are exploring the planet from orbit : three US, two European and one from India.
Tailpiece.
Got up almost half an hour late, the chores and was ready by a half past 9. Went about my usual activities for the day.
Participated in the webinar "Creation of Learning Materials Using the NDLI", between 1800 and 1900 hrs and the guest was Prof Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, former Director of IIT, Kharagpur. It was quite informative.
Three countries viz. the United States, China and the UAE are sending unmanned spacecraft to the red planet in quick succession, beginning this week. The effort is to seek signs of ancient microscopic life while scouting out the place for future astronauts or should I say, spacemen? China and the UAE are looking to join the elite club.
The US is dispatching a six-wheeled rover the size of a car, named Perseverance, to collect rock samples that will be brought back to Earth, for analysis, in about a decade.
The UAE spacecraft is named Amal, which is Arabic for 'hope'.
China readies Tianwen-1 Mars rover to blast off from Hainan island, off China's south coast.
Each spacecraft will travel 483 million kilometers before reaching Mars next February. It takes six to seven months, at the minimum, for a spacecraft to loop out beyond Earth's orbit and sync up with Mars' more distant orbit around the sun.
Scientists want to know what Mars was like billions of years ago when it had rivers, lakes and oceans that may have allowed simple, tiny organisms to flourish before the planet morphed into the barren, wintry desert world it is today.
The three nearly simultaneous launches are no coincidence : The timing is dictated by the opening of a one-month window in which Mars and Earth are in ideal alignment on the same side of the sun, which minimizes travel time and fuel use. Such a window opens only once every 26 months.
Mars has long exerted a powerful hold on the imagination but has proved to be the graveyard for numerous missions. Spacecraft have blown up, burned up or crash-landed, with the casualty rateover the decades exceeding 50%. China's last attempt in collaboration with Russia in 2011, ended in failure.
Only the US has successfully put a spacecraft on Mars, doing it eight times, beginning with the twin Vikings in 1976. Two NASA landers - InSight and Curiosity - are operating there. Six other spacecraft are exploring the planet from orbit : three US, two European and one from India.
Tailpiece.
Got up almost half an hour late, the chores and was ready by a half past 9. Went about my usual activities for the day.
Participated in the webinar "Creation of Learning Materials Using the NDLI", between 1800 and 1900 hrs and the guest was Prof Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, former Director of IIT, Kharagpur. It was quite informative.
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