Weather permitting, China's Tianwen-1 is expected to blast off Thursday from Hainan Island in the country's south, though the government has yet to publicly confirm the date. NASA's Perseverance rover is scheduled to launch on July 30. Both probes are expected to reach Mars in February 2021.
Perseverance aims to answer questions about the potential for life on Mars, including seeking signs of habitable conditions in the planet's ancient past and looking for evidence of microbial life. The rover has a drill which can be used to collect core samples from rocks and set them aside to potentially be collected and examined by a later mission.
If successful, Perseverance will be the seventh probe NASA has landed on Mars, and the fourth rover. Curiosity, which landed on the red planet in 2012, is still sending back data about the Martian surface.
Tianwen-1, whose name means "Quest for Heavenly Truth," is China's first mission to Mars. The probe will orbit the planet before landing a rover on the surface, with the hope that it can gather important information about the Martian soil, geological structure, environment, atmosphere, and search for signs of water.
In a paper last week, the scientific team behind Tianwen-1 said the probe is "going to orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and coordinate observations with an orbiter. No planetary missions have ever been implemented in this way."
By contrast, NASA sent multiple orbiters to Mars before ever attempting a landing. Pulling off the landing is a far more difficult task.
"If successful, it would signify a major technical breakthrough," the Chinese team wrote in the journal Nature.
Space race
In their paper, the Tianwen-1 scientists noted the chance for international collaboration to "advance our knowledge of Mars to an unprecedented level." It's not only their own probe and NASA's that are arriving at the planet next year, but also the United Arab Emirates' Hope Probe, which blasted off on Sunday. The Hope Probe is the Arab world's first interplanetary mission.
Scientists working for NASA and China's space agency have enjoyed a collegiate relationship in the past. They've collaborated on the International Space Station, and congratulated each other on successful missions, such as China's landing of a probe on the far side of the Moon, the first country to ever do so.
But for all the insistence of those involved to the contrary, the space race is inescapably political. NASA's early missions, particularly its historic landing of humans on the Moon in 1969, were fueled by the Cold War rivalry between Washington and the Soviet Union.
Beijing, for its part, is well aware of the potential prestige it could gain by outstripping the US in space. If Tianwen-1 is successful, it has plans to eventually send a manned mission to Mars.
Under President Xi Jinping, China has invested billions of dollars in building up its space program, even as it asserted its influence back on Earth more ag
