Robotic Exploration of Space

Today, February 18th 2021, at around 8.55pm GMT Perseverance Rover landed on Mars. I watched it live on Facebook. It was exciting to see NASA achieve this feat. I can't believe it's been nearly 9 months since I watched Space X Crew Dragon land on ISS (31 May 2020). Their way home went well until their descent which was bumpy and there was some charring to the Crew Dragon. It was a nail biting time waiting to see if the astronauts were ok. The doors took longer than expected to open due to fumes surrounding Crew Dragon. Eventually, the astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, left the capsule.

Other space explorations have occurred since then. The latest being China and UAE. 

The UAE launched Hope spacecraft 🛰mission to Mars, which won't be landing on Mars, but rather staying in orbit. It's the first attempt to gain a comprehensive understanding of hydrogen and oxygen in Mars' atmosphere because the planet's atmosphere is predominantly carbon dioxide. In adition, they will be studying light and what the weather is like over a Mars year or 2 earth years. They are the first Arab nation to orbit Mars. 

China is still orbiting Mars and hoping to land there later this year, May or June, whereas, as we know, NASA has landed on Mars today. China wants to learn about the geology on Mars, as well as, soil, ice and water, and are equipped with scientific instruments to this effect.

To sum up, as I understand it;

The UAE's Hope is an orbiter probe so can only orbit Mars to study its atmosphere

China's Tianwen - 1 is a hybrid between an orbiter and a rover, hence, orbits as well as, landing

NASA's Perseverance is a rover so lands and explores Mars rather than orbiting for information

They all took off last July (2020) to capitalize on planetary alignment between Mars and earth.

It's getting crowded up there! Have they co-ordinated their orbits? Do they share their results with the world? (UAE Hope says it will) Will there be a race to send astronauts to Mars? Who will be the first to establish a Martian colony? Should we be worried that it's all getting so competitive? What effect will it have on earth?

Top priorities for NASA and Tianwen 1 are:

finding out about the surface of Mars including the weather

studying dust 

looking for life and past life

finding water (liquid and ice) on Mars and how to extract it for human use

Since Mars isn't somewhere astronauts can travel the only way to learn about inhospitable planets is to use robots which then beam back information to earth complete with images and samples. This includes information that will help human space missions in the future. For example, dust particles are, once again, a problem. Mars has more dust than the Moon, therefore, it's a more challenging planet for human missions.🚀👩‍🚀