KATE THOMPSON DAVY: Earth’s orbit too tiny for rocketing egos
February is going to be like Christmas for fans and followers of space exploration. As I write this, the United Arab Emirates’s Hope Probe is mere minutes away from reaching Mars’s orbit. It’s unfolding as I type, but the trickiest part of this mission will be when it fires thrusters to slow its approach. From there, assuming all goes well, an ambitious study of Mars weather dynamics will be conducted.
Then, sometime on Wednesday, China’s unmanned Tianwen-1 mission will be entering Mars’s orbit, where it will stay for a while before attempting to put a rover on the planet’s surface. It’s getting there just ahead of Nasa’s Perseverance rover, which is due to land on Mars on the 18th...
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