February 2021 was all blast and hype about Mars, with three missions (!) successfully managing to reach the Red Planet and get to work. About two months after the first one reaching its destination, how are they doing?
Hope, the Emirates Mars Mission, is already at work, delivering science. Here’s a monochromatic image of the Cerberus Fossae, a fracture system that stretches for more than 1,000 km across the Martian surface, that its eXploration Imager (EXI) returned on 15 March 2021.
More observations are due to start on 14 April 2021 and will keep going for about two years.
Tianwen-1, China’s mission, must be quite busy at the moment, getting ready to land at some moment in the next couple of months, even though we’re still unsure where to. However, it is sending over good imagery in the meantime. Here’s Mars’s crescent images taken on April 6, with a medium-resolution camera when the probe was 6,800 miles (11,000 km) away, on the far side of the planet to the sun. The much-awaited landing, which will involve a parachute, rocket firings, and airbags, should target the Martian plain called Utopia Planitia. By the way, this is where the NASA Viking 2 lander touched down in 1976.
And what about Perseverance, NASA’s $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission which landed on Feb 18 at Jezero Crater? It turns out, things are going quite well, with the tiny Ingenuity –the first helicopter to fly on another planet–which is getting ready for its first mission (which should come as early as Sunday 11 April). For the moment, let’s enjoy their selfies!
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