2020 is set to be the biggest year yet for Mars exploration
2020 is set to be a good year for Mars exploration. The United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Europe and Russia all have planned Mars missions that are scheduled to launch, or likely to launch, in that year. There have been more than 40 missions to Mars throughout history. Some of these missions were failures, while others completed their goals and are no longer operational. Today, there are two operational robots on the Martian surface and five operational orbiters circling the planet.
To date, all successful missions to Mars have been completed by four entities: NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organization. Japan and China have tried and failed. In about five years, UAE and China hope to join the ranks of nations who’ve successfully explored Mars, while NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning ambitious missions to expand their Mars exploration capabilities. Why is everyone launching in 2020? It’s part strategic, and part coincidence. Because of the location of Mars relative to the Earth, prime launch windows (where the least amount of power is required to travel between the two planets) only open up every 26 months. One of those windows happens to be between July and August of 2020, which is when these missions are scheduled, or expected to launch. Of course, any of these missions could have been launched during earlier windows in 2018, or later windows in 2022; 2020 just happened to line up with budgets and development timelines. United States NASA owns and operates the only two working rovers on the surface of Mars today. Three of the five operational Mars orbiters also belong to NASA. A smaller Mars mission, the InSight lander, is scheduled to launch during the 2018 window, but NASA’s next big rover worth $1.9 billion will leave Earth in 2020.
To date, all successful missions to Mars have been completed by four entities: NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organization. Japan and China have tried and failed. In about five years, UAE and China hope to join the ranks of nations who’ve successfully explored Mars, while NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning ambitious missions to expand their Mars exploration capabilities. Why is everyone launching in 2020? It’s part strategic, and part coincidence. Because of the location of Mars relative to the Earth, prime launch windows (where the least amount of power is required to travel between the two planets) only open up every 26 months. One of those windows happens to be between July and August of 2020, which is when these missions are scheduled, or expected to launch. Of course, any of these missions could have been launched during earlier windows in 2018, or later windows in 2022; 2020 just happened to line up with budgets and development timelines. United States NASA owns and operates the only two working rovers on the surface of Mars today. Three of the five operational Mars orbiters also belong to NASA. A smaller Mars mission, the InSight lander, is scheduled to launch during the 2018 window, but NASA’s next big rover worth $1.9 billion will leave Earth in 2020.
The design of the Mars 2020 rover is based largely on the design of the Curiosity rover, one of the highly successful robots that is still operational on Mars today. The new 2020 rover will make use of Curiosity’s landing system and rover chassis design, but will carry a new set of seven instruments and upgraded hardware. Like many of the other landers and rovers before it, one goal of the Mars 2020 mission is to assess the habitability of its surrounding Martian environment. The rover will also directly search for signs of ancient Martian life. Equipped with a coring drill, the nuclear-powered rover will be capable of collecting and storing Martian samples. NASA’s goal is to, eventually, design a sample-return mission that would be able to retrieve the samples and bring them back to Earth. Another possibility is that future astronauts would collect these samples and bring them back.
