The international Mars mission agenda is currently a bustling one with the individual exploration plans of NASA, a number of other national space agencies, and private space firms like Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Robots that are now circling the planet and rolling across its terrain for the groundbreaking agenda surely won’t lack company.
Some of the projects will investigate Mars’ structure and composition, while others will seek signs of life. Experts believe that many other efforts are underway as the planet’s potential for harboring life is becoming better understood.
Space.com provided a rundown of Mars-bound countries and private companies:
• United States – In 2018, NASA is likely to launch its InSight lander and loft the Mars 2020 rover two years after to prove any signs of past life. It is also aiming to launch a multifunctional and next-gen orbiter toward the planet in the 2020s.
• Europe – The European Space Agency and Russia have joined forces to build their two-phase, life-seeking ExoMars project. The first phase involves a methane-sniffing orbiter and an entry, descent, and landing demonstrator module – it will arrive on the planet in October. On the other hand, the second phase will launch in 2020 a drill-armed rover.
• China – National officials aim to send a rover to Mars as early as 2020, as well as plan to stage a program that will collect samples from Mars to return to our planet in about 2030.
• India – The Mangalyaan, its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, went to work in September 2014. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) also partnered with NASA in investigating enhanced cooperation between their two nations in exploring Mars.
• Japan – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is contemplating the launch of a sample-return mission to one of Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos, with the selected moon targeted for an early 2020s landing.
• United Arab Emirates – The Middle-Eastern country is erecting a Mars orbiter to be launched by Japan in 2020, probing the connections between current and ancient planetary climate.
• SpaceX – According to Musk, his firm will launch an unmanned Dragon spacecraft toward Mars as early as 2018, helping pave the way for a human touchdown in 2025.Read more details on the Mars exploration ambitions of SpaceX, which has already landed Falcon 9 rockets to demonstrate reusable booster technology for reduced mission costs and greater human spaceflight potential.
“[It’s going to be] hard, risky, dangerous, difficult,” Musk told The Washington Post in an interview, with Dragon being the biggest to potentially land on the Martian surface “by a factor of 10.” The SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO dubbed it a “mind blowing” initiative, planning to reveal more mission details at a September conference.
Experts said, however, that these countries and companies have no single goal of reaching the Red Planet. While NASA is not chiefly eyeing the detection of extant Mars life, the ExoMars mission of Europe is publicly proclaiming its aim to find evidence of life, while the Mangalyaan of India is already on the prowl for methane from orbit as a potential sign of life.
China, on the other hand, may do things in earnest with their biotech expertise and may not completely focus on life seeking. UAE for its part looks preoccupied with offering the technical and human capacity building for the mission.
The Mars agenda, however, isn’t a race, but a show of “world interest in the Martian frontier” for extending humanity’s imagination and technological abilities for conquest, according to NASA chief scientist James Garvin from the Goddard Space Flight Center.
“Science is never really a race. The quest for understanding moves forward in fits and starts, as discoveries are made," Garvin told Space.com.
