A panoramic view of a portion of the Martian landscape taken by NASA’s Navcams on the Trail Rover, Feb. 20, 2021.
On Monday, NASA released stunning audio and video footage of key moments from last week’s landing of the Trailblazer Mars rover, the fifth successful landing of NASA’s Mars rover, further cementing the U.S.’s proud dominance in this field. China’s Tianwen-1 rover, which arrived in Mars orbit before Trailblazer, is also scheduled to make a soft landing on Mars in a few months, and it will be interesting to see if it succeeds.
“Trailblazer transmits a lot of valuable Martian audio and video materials
The U.S. rover Trail arrived in Mars orbit last week and successfully landed on Feb. 18, EST. On Monday (Feb. 22), NASA released multi-angle video and photos of the landing, as well as audio recordings from Mars.
The Trailblazer Mars rover will explore the Jezero impact crater (crater) on Mars. Scientists believe that this regional delta may retain traces of early Martian Life. Throughout the exploration, Perseverance will collect soil and rock samples and store them at a site on the surface of Mars, where NASA hopes to bring samples back to Earth on future missions to analyze them for evidence of past life on Mars and to explore issues related to human health that may face future manned missions to Mars.
The helicopter is currently charging in the “belly” of the rover and is functioning well. “charging and operating well.
Window precious three countries compete to “explore fire” first
2021 is a busy year for Mars exploration. In addition to the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates also each Mars probe in February this year to reach Mars orbit.
China’s Tianwen-1, launched by a Long March 5 rocket on July 23 last year, entered orbit around Mars on Feb. 10 this year, preparing to complete three missions at once: orbit, landing and surface inspection of Mars. Compared to the “straight to the point” type mission plan of the Trail landing and sample collection, Tianqian-1 chose to orbit Mars for about three months, and plans to land on Mars in May to June 2021.
The UAE Mars probe “Hope”, launched from Japan on July 20 last year, successfully entered Mars orbit on February 9 this year to study the Martian atmosphere and plan to orbit Mars for at least two years without a landing mission.
Three countries in a year at the same Time to carry out the Mars mission, both short-term exploration “window” factor, but also reflects the countries in recent years in the field of space science and technology to promote non-stop.
Earth and Mars rotate around the sun at different speeds, the farthest distance between the two planets more than 400 million kilometers, the nearest time about 54.6 million kilometers, Mars exploration mission launch time is often chosen in the most suitable time for the relative position of the Earth and Mars, that is, the probe to fly to Mars requires the least energy point, such a “Mars exploration window This “Mars exploration window” occurs only once every 26 months.
The window is only a few weeks,” Paul Byrne, a planetary geologist and associate professor at North Carolina State University, told the Voice of America. That’s why we saw Hope, SkyQuest and Perseverance all launch within three weeks of each other last summer.”
“But in the long term, the doubling of the number of countries with spacecraft on Mars (and in orbit) in the relatively short time frame of the last three or four years is amazing, it’s a level of space exploration that we haven’t seen in the last few decades and it’s very exciting.” He said.
Will the most powerful U.S. “sky question” for Mars exploration succeed in its first battle?
Countries have carried out about 50 missions to Mars, and only 20 have been successful. So far, the Soviet Union, the United States and China have launched their own probes to Mars. But only the United States has successfully operated multiple rovers on the red planet so far (four before Trailblazer).
In 2016, the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli probe crashed on the surface of Mars. The Russian-European partnership ExoMarS-2022 plans to send Europe’s first Mars rover, Rosalind Franklin, to Mars next year.
Earlier, the first Mars rover, Firefly-1, was launched in 2011 by the Chinese National Space Administration in cooperation with Europe and Russia for the primary purpose of initial orbit of Mars, but crashed in the Pacific Ocean after launch in January 2012 due to technical problems with the Russian rover.
Bern, a planetary geologist at North Carolina State University, said NASA’s Mars rovers, which began with Voyager in 1997, and later with Courage, Opportunity and Curiosity, have been a major part of the Mars mission. “Opportunity, Curiosity and now Perseverance, the technology has continued to improve.
In terms of countries, agencies or entities associated with Mars exploration, NASA and the United States are certainly the most technically experienced,” said Bourne. Trailblazer is actually similar to the previous Curiosity, with a heavier mass. The technical requirements to get a rover like Trail to the surface of Mars, and to succeed both times, are staggering, and that technology is currently available only to the United States.”
NASA released a video of the Trailblazer landing showing the separation of the rover’s “aerial crane. The Martian atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, and the probe enters the Martian atmosphere and lands from a high speed of 12,000 miles per hour to a stable landing in just seven minutes. This process, which NASA called “seven minutes of terror” (seven minutes of terror), relies on precise measurements, without any opportunity to make corrections or adjustments during the process.
China’s Tianwen-1 will also experience this “seven minutes of terror”. We expect to see the Tianwen-1 rover land on the surface of Mars sometime this summer,” Bourne said. If successful, China will become the third entity or country after the United States and the Soviet Union to make a successful soft landing on the surface of Mars.
Soft Power and International Prestige
The Wall Street Journal editorialized that such Mars missions give the United States an exclusive space advantage, a “soft power that inspires and draws talent to the United States.” The article said that China’s Mars rover is scheduled to land in a few months, and the space race between the U.S. and China will enter a new phase.
Of course, all of these missions are certainly about national prestige, and that’s definitely something that politicians are at least aware of,” said North Carolina State University’s Bourne. But from a scientific standpoint, there’s almost no competition between scientists and almost always cooperation.”
Both the U.S. and Chinese Mars rovers have similar mission goals – to understand the surface, the interior and the composition of the Martian atmosphere – for the reason that humans know very little about these aspects of any planet other than Earth, Bourne said.
“Although they (the Mars rovers’ missions) are very similar, because these rovers will go to different locations, they will still learn new science, will not be redundant and will still advance our understanding of Mars.” He said.
He also said that because this is the first time a Chinese spacecraft has approached Mars, Tianwen-1 also carries the engineering burden of learning how to land safely and how to operate a Mars rover.
The ultimate point of exploring Mars is to understand the Earth and humanity itself
Bourne believes that the idea of “colonizing Mars” is far-fetched, but studying Mars can improve human understanding of the planet’s universal living conditions.
He said scientists believe that the presence of large amounts of flowing liquid water on the surface of Mars billions of years ago influenced the planet’s landscape and suggests that its atmosphere was much thicker than it is today.
“Mars therefore provides us with an opportunity to understand a planet that has experienced severe climate change.” He said, “How can a planet go from a place where liquid water is stable to a place where it’s cold, dry and dusty now? So Mars is a very useful, natural laboratory to understand that, and that’s ultimately one of the big questions we face about how life forms on a planet, how it’s preserved, and how a planet loses conditions that can be suitable for survival.”
Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy director of NASA’s Science Mission Council, said at a press conference Monday on the Mars AV materials, “The implications of exploration for us will always be broader than those things that are useful for now.”
He said, “We want to look at our generation’s contributions in a way that ensures we take what we already know forward and in the process influence our understanding of ourselves, which is often done through research.”
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