Chennai: The Emirates Mars Mission, also known as the Hope orbiter, is expected to enter the Martian orbit Tuesday, at 7.30 pm local time (1530 GMT). This is the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars.
China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter and lander is expected to enter the Martian orbit within 24 hours of that. However, there is no official word on the expected time of entry. The insertion could occur Wednesday at 8 pm Beijing time (1200 GMT).
Following the two missions will be NASA’s Mars 2020 mission carrying the Perseverance rover, which will directly reach and land on the planet on 18 February.
Hope mission
The Hope orbiter — as well as the other two missions — was launched in July 2020 and will be the first to arrive at Mars.
Before orbital insertion, Hope will burn its engines for 27 minutes to slow down from 1,21,000 kmph to 18,000 kmph so that it can be captured by the Martian gravity.
The $200 million mission insertion will be telecast live by the official UAE Space Agency.
“For the first time, three spacecraft from three different nations are arriving to Mars a couple of days apart and that, for me, is remarkable,” said Sarah Al Amiri, chairperson of the UAE Space Agency and Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, at a virtual event on 1 February.
If the orbital insertion is successful, the 550-kg Hope will immediately begin its science mission.
It will study the Martian atmosphere, its climate, local variations in weather, loss of hydrogen and oxygen to space in a process called Jeans escape, presence and concentrations of water vapour, and differences in the various layers of the wispy Martian atmosphere.
The findings are expected to help model Earth’s atmosphere and evolution, as well as model the atmospheres of exoplanets.
Also read: ISRO plans to launch Brazilian satellite, 3 Indian payloads on 28 February
Tianwen-1
China’s Tianwen-1 comes after its previous Mars probe, a part of Russia’s Fobos-Grunt mission, failed to exit Earth orbit in 2011.
Developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, it consists of an orbiter and a lander, which hosts a rover inside.
The orbiter will insert itself into a highly elliptical orbit, and the spacecraft will have an observational orbit phase and a scientific orbit phase. The rover will attempt landing only in the month of May, after studying the atmosphere from orbit first.
While flying to Mars, two wide-angle lenses on the camera were deployed to snap an image of the destination Red Planet.
China traditionally does not broadcast details of its missions, and there will be no live stream available in advance.
The mission aims to study Martian soil composition and distribution of water ice. It will also study the atmosphere with a focus on the ionosphere of Mars.
It is a tech demonstrator for the much larger sample return mission that China is planning for the next decade.
Also read: US team including 2 teenagers discovers ‘planetary lab’ with a rocky super-earth