With The Window Tightening To Reach "Barsoom" Before Late 2022, China Too Will Launch For Mars, Likely Tomorrow...

If it seems as though lots of probes are launching for Mars here in late July / early August 2020, it is not just a perception: it is reality.

You see, the Earth and Mars will be well aligned for a graceful, easy "catch up" chase, by early 2021 (closing lots of distance just by how the two are now aligned) -- but to be in the right spot, at the right time, one must leave Earth in the next few weeks. . . otherwise, the gap between the orbit of Mars, and the orbit of Earth. . . will have widened to the point that it takes too much fuel to then overtake Mars, at a sensible speed of approach. [Thus the age old poets' dilemma: to freeze, nearby -- or burn, at a vast distance. . .?]

And to be sure, we see that China is attempting a very big "first attempt" leap -- to initially get "orbital capture", then drop in, parachute, and ultimately soft-land -- and finally (it is hoped) drive, on Mars -- both expensive, and fraught. Note that the UAE Hope mission will only attempt imaging and monitoring, from a high and safe orbit around Mars. We await China's launch tomorrow then. Here's the latest, from Ars Technica, and a bit:

. . .With its ambitious Tianwen 1 mission, China will attempt to orbit and land on Mars on its first attempt, subsequently deploying a rover. This is significant, because the typical mode of exploration is to first flyby a new world, then enter orbit, and only then send a spacecraft to land and potentially rove around.

China has the benefit of learning from NASA's exploration of the red planet, of course. Even before Perseverance, NASA has landed eight spacecraft successfully on the surface of Mars over a period of decades.

But it is not easy. The Soviet Union sent multiple landers to Mars, and none survived more than a few seconds on the planet's surface. Two attempts to land by the European Space Agency have also failed.

The mission is likely to launch early Thursday, US time, between midnight and 3am EDT (04:00-07:00 UTC) Thursday onboard a Long March 5 rocket from a spaceport on Hainan, an island in the South China Sea. . . .

[In early 2021, China will deploy a landing] process [that] has some common elements with the manner in which NASA put its Curiosity rover on the ground, and Chinese officials have been telling the public to expect "seven minutes of terror," as Curiosity's 2012 landing was described by NASA. . . .

On, to a better tomorrow -- NASA launches next week, for Mars -- as we all live in one tiny pale blue life-raft, from the perspective of these three nations' crafts. . . as they gaze back on us, and beam images, home.

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