UAE probe arrives on Mars ahead of China and the United States

The three space probes that blasted off in the second half of July from Japan, China and the United States will reach Mars' orbit in February. This is the first time that three countries have competed during the same period of time to reach the last rocky planet in the Solar System.

The first spacecraft to enter under the interaction of the Red Planet will be the UAE's Al Amal spacecraft, which launched from Japan's Tanegashima space base on 19 July. The technicians who monitor and control it day and night from Dubai and from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Deep Space Network stations (in Robledo de Chavela (Madrid), Canberra (Australia) and Goldstone (California) have calculated that it will reach the orbit of the Red Planet on Tuesday, 9 February, at 16:42 (Spanish peninsular time).

At that time, the UAE will become the first Arab nation to reach another planet, a milestone that will mark the start of official celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the nation's independence. While the Gulf country will be lavishing celebrations, the three instruments on board Al Amal will be put into action to capture data from the current Martian atmosphere. With the information obtained, "researchers will be able to better understand the seasonal changes that occur on Mars after it loses its dense atmosphere 4 billion years ago," explains Sarah Al Amiri, the mission's science lead.

Live telemetry from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai shows that Al Amal is travelling at a speed of 78,828 kilometres per hour, has already covered more than 464 million kilometres and has 16 million kilometres to go, a distance that is decreasing with each passing moment, while the probe's speed is gradually slowing down.

The second probe that, after seven months of travelling through the cosmos, will achieve its goal will be the Chinese Tianwen-1. It is already in the process of slowing down its speed, as it will enter under the influence of our neighbouring planet on 10 February, at a time that the Chinese authorities have not yet authorised to be announced. 

And the third will be the US Mars2020 mission, which carries an all-terrain vehicle packed with cutting-edge technology. Named Perseverance, it is scheduled to land on the Red Planet on 18 February. One of the equipment on board is a sophisticated Spanish weather station called MEDA, which is the result of close collaboration between the Astrobiology Centre and the Spanish space industry.

The modes of operation and purposes of the three missions are different. Al Amal will orbit Mars for two years. During that time, it will acquire about a thousand GB of data, which it will send back to Earth so that more than two hundred academic and scientific institutions around the world can have a complete view of the Martian atmosphere free of charge. 

In contrast, the Chinese and US missions are very different from the UAE mission, even from each other. Tianwen-1 is China's first assault on Mars and the world's first space mission to simultaneously achieve three major goals on the same celestial body: to study a star from orbit, to land a module on its surface and to deploy an all-terrain vehicle to conduct scientific research in situ.

To meet all the challenges facing the expedition, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) spacecraft consists of an orbiter and a descent capsule. Once it reaches the Red Planet's orbit in ten days' time, it will circle around it for about two months. During that time, technicians at the Beijing Control Centre will have to choose the exact location for the descent capsule, which encloses a surface module. 

Inside is an all-terrain vehicle, which is due to roll across the Martian soil next May over a large plain known as Utopia Planitia, an impact zone identified as the largest in the solar system. If the Tianwen-1 mission achieves its final goal, China will become the third country to do so. The rover is equipped with radar to detect underground pockets of water that may contain signs of past or present life.

NASA's project is Mars2020, the eleventh mission the United States has sent to the Red Planet. Like China's Tianwen-1, inside its protective shell is a six-wheel-drive rover (Perseverance), which is also equipped to detect signs of extraterrestrial life.

The Perseverance rover is equipped with a drill to scan and drill the Martian soil for signs of extraterrestrial life. It also incorporates a 1.8-kilogram mini helicopter called Ingenuity, which is attached to its underside. Equipped with a powerful camera, technicians on the ground will fly it over the Jezero crater, a site where scientists believe a lake may have once existed.

Professor Katie Stack, one of the mission's lead scientists, says Perseverance is "the most sophisticated robotic laboratory yet sent to any star in the Universe". That's because it has to answer the big question of whether there are signs of past microbial life on Mars. Two sophisticated instruments will be key to the investigation: SHERLOC, a detector of organic matter and minerals; and PIXL, which will analyse the chemical composition of the captured rocks and sediments in great detail.

All three Martian expeditions take advantage of the same time window, when the trajectory of Mars around the Sun passes close to the Earth, which reduces the duration of the journey, the energy required for launch and, consequently, the high investments involved in any liftoff to the Red Planet.

The Al Amal, Tianwen-1 and Mars2020 missions make a total of 48 expeditions sent to explore Mars, of which only 17 have so far been successful, which gives an idea of the difficulties. The first attempt was made in October 1960. Russia - then the Soviet Union - attempted to reach Mars with the 2-tonne Mars 1 probe, but the Soyuz launcher in which it was travelling veered off course within minutes of liftoff and was destroyed in mid-flight.