TECH2 by Aakar Patel Jul 28, 2019
There are currently people working on trying to establish a permanent human colony on Mars.Last week we looked at Chandrayaan 2, India’s moon mission and I had referred in passing to Mars. I thought it would interest readers to know what is going on in the rest of the world on that front. Four missions to Mars are being planned next year by various agencies. Why so many together? The reason is that Mars and Earth come closest to each other once every 26 months. Because both are revolving around the sun in different orbits, Mars can sometimes be as far away as 40 crore kilometres from us. At the closest, it can be less than 4 crore kilometres away.
Obviously, that is the time when it is sensible to launch a rocket towards it and the next window that is happening is in July 2020.
On 17 July, America’s car-sized Mars Rover will lift off. Eight days after that, the Russian-European mission named Rosalind Franklin after the English chemist, will take off. Both vehicles will likely land on Mars in February 2021. They will perform experiments and look for signs of life.
China is also launching at the same time with an orbiter (meaning a satellite that will orbit Mars) and a rover, meaning a device that will land. There are currently six orbiters, including three from America’s NASA, two from Europe and India’s Mars Orbiter. And there are two operational rovers on Mars, both from NASA. The solar powered Chinese rover will be around 250 kilos. The fourth mission is from the United Arab Emirates and they are using a Japanese rocket to get to Mars.
More:
https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/why-space-agencies-companies-world-over-are-looking-to-mars-as-the-next-frontier-7069011.html
