Space News thread

[Takeovers]

Fingers crossed for a successful launch, flight, Mars orbit, lander touchdown and rover performance.

Seconded. Mars landing is hard. The Soviet Union/Russia has a proud history of 100% failures on their missions to Mars, both orbiters and landers, and there were plenty. You may count one as a success. It landed, it began to transmit one photo from the ground and failed after ~20 seconds.

This Mars launch window is busy. There are 3 probes planned to go.

The Chinese lander is now on the pad for launch. It is their first. If it fails, which is quite possible, they won't be discouraged, they will try again.

The US rover 2020, now named perseverance is scheduled to lift off on July 30 with the launch window open until Aug. 15. There were a number of delays due to problems with payload integration and the ULA Atlas V rocket. Perseverance is basically a copy of Curiosity but with different science payload including a small helicopter. Perseverance will among other tasks select a number of mars samples that may get collected and brought back to Earth in the early 2030ies.

The third mission is the first arab interplanetary mission. They send the Mars orbiter called Hope. It launches on a japanese launch vehicle. They say the order of their government was clear, build it, don't buy it. So they cooperate with the University of Boulder, Colorado in building it. The orbiter will add significantly to the knowledge on the martian atmosphere if their mission is successful.