Ingenuity, the little helicopter delivered along with NASA’s Perseverance mission, made history on April 19, by flying on the Red Planet. It was the first time that remote controlled and powered flights were carried out on another planet.
It was the first in a planned series of daring flights. It was a busy year for Mars as major missions launched in 2020 arrived at Mars during 2021. While the UAE’s Mars mission Hope and Chinese mission Tianwen-1 entered Mars orbit in February, China’s lander soft-landed on the Red Planet in May. Perseverance rover landed in February and is currently collecting samples for return to Earth via a future mission. In December, scientists announced that the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted significant amounts of water at the heart of Mars’ dramatic canyon system, Valles Marineris.
The United Arab Emirates’ first interplanetary mission, the Hope probe, achieved Mars orbit Tuesday (Feb. 9), as Live Science sister site Space.com reported. China’s first interplanetary mission, Tianwen-1, is scheduled to enter its own Martian orbit Wednesday (Feb. 10). The Chinese probe includes both an orbiter and a lander with a rover onboard, which is expected to try to land on the surface in May. And on Feb. 18, NASA’s first-of-its-kind descent vehicle will reach Mars and plunge directly through its atmosphere. If all goes according to plan, the vehicle will shed its outer shell and use rockets to stop its descent at the last moment. Then it will hover above the surface to lower the rhinoceros-sized, nuclear-powered, $2.7 billion Perseverance rover to the dirt via skycrane.
Credit : Live Science
Picture Credit : Google
