Daily Times

The Red Planet is about to get a little crowded. Three separate missions to Mars launched by the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will all reach their destination this month after taking flight within just 11 days of each other in 2020.

The uncrewed missions promise to yield new insights for Earth-bound scientists intent on unravelling the mysteries of the solar system and scanning Mars for signs of extraterrestrial life, as well as enhancing our collective understanding of the cosmos.

It will be the first to test flight on another planet, in an atmosphere that’s thinner than the Earth’s, and may help our understanding of future human spaceflight beyond the moon.

Named Al Amal, the Arabic word for “hope”, the UAE Space Agency’s probe represents its first foray into space.

Al Amal will spend 687 days — a period equivalent to one year on Mars — gathering information on the Martian atmosphere and surveying the planet’s weather patterns throughout its four seasons.

In doing so, it may shed light on the mystery of Mars’s transformation from a warm, wet world – one with an atmosphere thick enough to support liquid water on its surface, and potentially capable of supporting life – into the cold and barren planet it is today.

The China National Space Administration has kept the goals of its inaugural mission to Mars, named Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven”, closely guarded.

What is known is that its probe is expected to make orbital insertion on February 10, eight days before the craft guided by US space agency NASA is scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet with its Perseverance rover in tow.