Each mission will have a particular focus when studying the red planet.
Last summer there was a three-nation race to send missions to Mars. Now that the missions have all arrived at the red planet, let’s take a closer look at what they’re going to do there.
Watch NASA’s Perseverance rover land on Mars.
The NASA Perseverance Rover
The mission of the Perseverance rover is to seek out signs of ancient microscopic life on the Martian surface—giving NASA scientists a clearer picture of past habitability on the planet that could provide clues for future human habitation. The rover has a suite of cutting-edge technologies to accomplish this task.
The Mastcam-Z is the rover’s main eyes: a mast-mounted camera with a zoom function that can take 3D pictures and high-speed video of distant objects. Its color quality is comparable to a store-bought digital camera: 2 megapixels, with a maximum image size of 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels—plus the ability to clearly capture details between about 150 microns per pixel to 0.3 inches per pixel, depending on how far away the object is.
The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) measures weather variables such as wind speed and direction, temperature, relative humidity, radiation, and the amount and size of dust particles in the atmosphere. It also has a thermal infrared sensor.
MOXIE—the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment—has the ambitious task of producing oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide-heavy atmosphere for propellant and for breathing. It will be able to produce up to 10 grams of oxygen an hour and will do so various times during the mission.
“When we send humans to Mars, we will want them to return safely, and to do that they need a rocket to lift off the planet,” said Michael Hecht, principal investigator at MIT. “Liquid oxygen propellant is something we could make there and not have to bring with us. One idea would be to bring an empty oxygen tank and fill it up on Mars.”
The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) will use an X-ray spectrometer to identify chemical elements at a tiny scale and a camera that can take pictures at such close magnification that it can capture features as small as a grain of sand. The PIXL will be used to search for signs of past life on a microbial scale.
The RIMFAX, or Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment, will use radar waves to probe the terrain beneath the rover to a depth of up to 30 feet.
SHERLOC is the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals and is mounted on the rover’s robotic arm. The device uses a combination of cameras, spectrometers, and a laser to search for organics and minerals that have been altered by liquid environments and may demonstrate signs of past microbial life. In addition to its black-and-white context camera, SHERLOC is assisted by WATSON, a color camera for taking close-up images of rock grains and surface textures.
And finally, the SuperCam on the Perseverance rover examines rocks and soils with a camera, a laser and spectrometers to seek organic compounds that could be related to past life on Mars. It uses a laser to identify the chemical and mineral makeup of targets as small as a pencil point from a distance of more than 20 feet. This allows the rover to study objects it can’t reach.
Perseverance also features a breakthrough technology: the Ingenuity helicopter, which could become the first powered flying vehicle on Mars. It is a technology demonstrator that will test the viability of powered flight on the planet—which could initiate new possibilities for airborne exploration of the planet. Ingenuity will be powered by two coaxial 1.2-meter-long carbon fiber rotors that can spin at a rate of 2,400 RPM; a standard commercial helicopter on Earth operates at around 500 RPM, but Ingenuity’s rotors will have to spin much faster to compensate for Mars’ much thinner atmosphere. The first flight is slated to take place in 30 to 60 days.
The Al-Amal Probe
The United Arab Emirates’ Al-Amal probe will focus on creating the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere throughout an entire Martian year. The planet keeps losing hydrogen and oxygen from its atmosphere into space—and Al-Amal aims to determine why this occurs, and how the weather influences the way the gases escape from the planet’s atmosphere. To accomplish these objectives, the probe will deploy the following technologies:
The EMIRS instrument is an interferometric thermal infrared spectrometer with a rotating mirror that will study the lower Martian atmosphere, in particular the geographical distribution of dust, water vapor and water ice. EMIRS will also analyze the thermal structure of the Martian atmosphere and its variability over the seasons of the Martian year.
The EXI, or Emirates eXploration Imager, is a multi-wavelength radiation-tolerant camera that uses a double Gauss compound lens. It will capture high resolutions of the lower atmosphere and measure the optical depth of water ice in the atmosphere in visible and ultraviolet bands. The device will also analyze the Martian ozone. EXI can take 12-megapixel images at 180 frames per seconds—giving it the capability of creating 4K movies.
Lastly, the Hope satellite features an ultraviolet spectrometer named EMUS, which will analyze carbon monoxide and oxygen levels in the atmosphere, and oxygen and hydrogen levels in the exosphere, as well as measure fluctuations in the thermosphere.
The Tianwen-1 Orbiter and Lander
While the U.S. deployed a rover and the UAE sent a probe, China decided to do both. The Tianwen-1 mission is comprised of an orbiting spacecraft and a rover. The rover will descend to the surface in May 2021 after the Chinese mission finds a suitable landing spot. Between the two devices, Chinese scientists hope to study Mars from the surface and from high above it simultaneously.
The orbiter, which has a projected life span of two years, contains seven instruments that include high- and medium-resolution cameras, a magnetometer, an ion and neutral particle analyzer, a high-energy particle analyzer, a spectrometer and a radar that will penetrate the planet’s surface to examine the density and composition of the soil below the surface.
The 440-pound solar-powered rover features a multispectral camera, a camera for navigation and topography analysis, a ground-penetrating radar that can peer 100 meters below the surface (which will search for subterranean water pockets), a laser spectroscopy instrument, a magnetic field detector, and a climate analyzer. The vehicle looks similar to the Spirit and Opportunity robots and is only intended to last about 90 days, during which time it will communicate with Earth via the orbiter. But given how long the NASA vehicles lasted, who knows how long the rover might function.
There is also hope that Tianwen-1 can be used as a stepping-stone for a future mission that would bring back Martian rock and soil samples to Earth.
Read more about these three missions at A Race to Mars is Starting in Summer 2020.
