Dubbed Tianwen-1, China’s first mission to Mars aims to land a rover to gather scientific data
In this photo provided by spaceflightfans.cn, people gather around a Long March-5 carrier rocket at the Wenchang Space Launch Center, in southern China's Hainan Province, on July 17, 2020.The rocket is due to blast off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern island province of Hainan in late July or early August, according to state media reports Friday that quoted the China National Space Administration.
The timelines for such missions are daunting and the countries involved are striving to take best advantage of a one-month window in which Mars and Earth are in ideal alignment on the same side of the sun, minimizing travel time and fuel use. Such a window opens only once every 26 months. Each spacecraft will travel more than 480 million kilometres before reaching Mars next February. In the process, they will loop out beyond Earth’s orbit and sync up with Mars’ more distant orbit around the sun.
The UAE spacecraft, named Amal, or “Hope” in Arabic, is an orbiter built in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder and is now scheduled to launch from Japan on Monday. It will be the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.Scientists want to know what Mars was like billions of years ago, back when it had water sources that may have supported tiny life forms before turning into the frozen world it is today.
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