Sky and Telescope - November 2017 - 20

The Next Space Sprint

º NASA has had an active robot on the surface or in
orbit at Mars since 1997.

solved the issue: "We also have a new way to extract organics,
which is by using a large UV laser," says Vago. The laser ﬂashheats the sample so fast that these perchlorates don't have
time to dissociate, meaning MOMA can extract and analyze
the organics unimpeded.

New Contenders
Joining NASA and ESA in 2020, China plans to send an
orbiter and surface mission as part of its rapidly expanding
space endeavors. The still-unnamed project is the nation's
second attempt to reach Mars: Its ﬁrst, a joint endeavor with
Russia, failed to leave Earth orbit in 2011. The details of
the 2020 program are still shrouded in mystery, but what is
known is that the rover will have six wheels and be roughly
the same size as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Carrying four solar panels with an expected operational lifetime
of three Martian months, the rover will tote 13 instruments,
including a remote-sensing camera, ground-penetrating
radar, and likely a host of spectrometers.
Speaking at a press conference, chief designer Zhang
Rongqiao said that the goal of the mission is to study the
planet's features, including its soil and atmosphere and
the distribution of water and ice. It remains unclear if the
Chinese mission will actively hunt for life, though the orbiter
might be able to detect atmospheric methane.
The UAE Space Agency may only be three years old, but its
scientists and engineers also have their sights set on arriving
at Mars in 2021, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the
UAE's founding. Sporting an imager and two spectrometers,
the car-size Hope orbiter aims to create the ﬁrst global picture
of Mars's climate, recording daily and seasonal changes in
temperature, water vapor, and dust, as well as how the upper
and lower atmospheric layers interact. It will also search for
connections between today's weather and the ancient, hospitable one we think existed.
But the science is only one piece of a much larger strategy
that the UAE is putting together, whose endgame is colonizing Mars by 2117. By reaching for this goal, the national
space program is intended to make the UAE a hub of scientiﬁc innovation, reducing the country's dependence on oil
by inspiring and enabling young Emiratis to enter careers in
science and technology.
The private company SpaceX has lofty colonial ambitions
for Mars, too, aiming to transport 1 million people to the
planet in the next 50 to 100 years. The ﬁrst step was to be an
uncrewed Red Dragon spacecraft launch, also in 2020 and
potentially landing somewhere in Arcadia Planitia. But recent
statements by CEO Elon Musk suggest the Red Dragon's been
nixed. It's unclear what will replace it, and when.
20

N O V E M B E R 2 0 17 * S K Y & T E L E S C O P E

Although the dream of real-live people setting foot on
Mars powers some (if not all) of these endeavors, current
landing technologies can't make that happen. For example,
NASA's methods rely on parachutes, airbags, and small
retrorockets, but this would not cut the mustard for heavy,
crewed missions to Mars, which will involve payloads roughly
20 times what Curiosity's descent technology can handle.
Instead, some engineers are working on supersonic retropropulsion - ﬁring thrusters to slow the craft when it's still
traveling faster than sound. Although spacecraft have used
retropropulsion to land on both the Moon and Mars at lower
speeds, a vehicle's aerodynamics are completely different
above Mach 1. It's unclear when this technology will have a
chance to prove itself on Mars.

A Planet-size Time Capsule
Even if everything goes perfectly with these missions, the bad
news for anyone hoping to ﬁnd out if Martians once existed
is that none of them is expected to ﬁnd incontrovertible proof
of past life. Simply put, the technology required is just too big
to send to another planet. "We're just not there yet in terms
of turning these super-sophisticated cutting-edge laboratories
into instruments the size of a shoebox and putting them on a
spacecraft," says Bell.
Searches for life present on Mars today will have to wait
even longer. "When we say we will search for past or present
life, what we really mean is that we concentrate on looking
for signs of past life - from 3 to 4 billion years ago," explains

p CHINA MISSION China also plans to send an orbiter (above), lander,
and rover to Mars in 2020. The rover is in the foreground.

XINHUA (2)

TOWARD A PERMANENT PRESENCE

Sky and Telescope - November 2017

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