Category: Mission to Mars

Japan plans to send a probe to Mars’ largest moon Phobos in 2024. It will land on Phobos, collect samples, and also observe the smaller moon Deimos and Mars’ climate during flybys of both. The probe will then send the samples back to Earth. they are expected to arrive in July 2029.

Mangalyaan 2 is the Indian Space Research Organization’s follow-up to its initial interplanetary mission to Mars. An orbiter has been announced as the main component of the mission thus far, with a lander and rover as potential additions. The mission is currently planned for the 2021-22 launch window.

To be launched as a piggyback payload with another Mars-bound mission in the July/August 2020 launch window (no partner has been announced yet), the Mars Terahertz Microsatellite is a joint venture of Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and the University of Tokyo Intelligent Space Systems Laboratory (ISSL). The terahertz sensor will be sent to the surface of Mars to measure oxygen isotope ratios in the atmosphere to better understand the chemical reactions that resupply the Martian atmosphere with carbon dioxide. read more

China’s National Space Science Center is preparing an interplanetary mission to Mars that will launch in July or August 2020. The mission’s planned payload includes an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The mission will serve as a technological demonstration of the resources and tech required for a Mars sample return mission, proposed to occur in the 2030s.

Named for English chemist and DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, this rover comprises one part of the joint ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2020 mission, which aims to search for evidence of past or present life on Mars over the course of its seven-month operation. ESA will provide the rover, while Roscosmos will supply the lander. The launch window was moved from 2018 to July 2020 due to production delays, but the Rosalind Franklin appears set to make its new launch date.

This upcoming NASA mission aims to study Martian astrobiology in an attempt to understand what environmental conditions may have been like on Mars in the past via a Martian sample return. The objective would be to have the rover collect samples of rocks, minerals, and other materials on Mars and return them to Earth in a later mission. Launch is currently scheduled for July 17, 2020, and it is expected touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on February 18, 2021.

Hope is a notable mission for one big reason: It marks the first Mars probe launched by any Arab or Muslim country. Announced by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, Hope aims to discover why the planet has lost its atmosphere. The findings are also expected to help scientists better model our own atmosphere going back some 1 million years. The UAE is currently targeting a July 2020 launch, and arrive at Mars in 2021, around the time of the UAE’s 50th Anniversary. read more

Mars 1M No.1, designated Mars 1960A by NASA analysts and dubbed Marsnik 1 by the Western media, was the first spacecraft launched as part of the Soviet Union’s Mars programme.[1] A Mars 1M spacecraft, it was intended for conducting flight testing system and to study the interplanetary environment between Earth and Mars, however it was lost in a launch failure before it could begin its mission.[2][3]

Mars 1M No.2, designated Mars 1960B by NASA analysts and dubbed Marsnik 2 by the Western media, was a spacecraft launched as part of the Soviet Union’s Mars programme, which was lost in a launch failure in 1960.[1] 1M No.2, which was intended to explore Mars from flyby trajectory, was destroyed after its Molniya carrier rocket failed to achieve orbit.[2][3]

Mars 2MV-4 No.1[1][2] also known as Sputnik 22 in the West, was a Soviet spacecraft, which was launched in 1962 as part of the Mars programme, and was intended to make a flyby of Mars,[3] and transmit images of the planet back to Earth.[4] Due to a problem with the rocket which launched it, it was destroyed in low Earth orbit.[5] It was the first of two Mars 2MV-4 spacecraft to be launched, the other being the Mars 1 spacecraft which was launched eight days later.[2]