As crises rock Earth, humans look to Mars

Today NASA's new rover, with helicopter, will be headed off to Mars.

On Thursday, NASA is slated to launch another mission to Mars. The U.S. space exploration agency plans to deploy a new rover - a $2.7 billion, six-legged, car-size machine dubbed Perseverance - to continue the prowl over the Red Planet's rocks and craters, scanning the grounds of what's believed, billions of years ago, to have been a river delta and deep lake in search of fossilized microbial evidence of Martian life.


At a time when the United States is struggling to contend with a viral pandemic at home, its pioneering capacity to explore the solar system may provide a boost to its battered national prestige.


But it would also be the second such mission to Mars in the space of a week. Last Thursday, China launched its first attempt to land on the planet, sending off probe Tianwen-1 (meaning "to question the heavens") from a site on the southern island of Hainan. It includes both an orbiter that will take images and measurements while circling the planet and a rover intended for the Martian surface.





The Chinese launch came four days after the United Arab Emirates' first major foray beyond the Earth's orbit - the Amal probe rocketed off from a facility in Japan and is scheduled to enter the Martian orbit around February 2021, in time for the Arab monarchy's celebration of the 50th anniversary of its country's formation.
Read the rest of the article at the link.