Opinion

Beijing has just broken Washington's monopoly on Mars soil

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Yes, it has. Once again the Chinese have achieved their aims. Xi Jinping's China has once again demonstrated its great capabilities and its iron will to devote the necessary economic and technological potential to the exploration of outer space.

Although in recent months the Chinese Space Agency has accustomed the whole world to great surprises, on this occasion it has achieved a feat that only the United States has been able to accomplish, making the great Asian country the second nation to touch the surface of the Red Planet and survive the attempt. The Soviet Union succeeded on 2 December 1971 with the Mars 3 mission, but the spacecraft stopped transmitting before reaching the two-minute mark.

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The successful descent of the surface module on top of which the rover named Zhurong - the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology - is of paramount importance. In doing so, President Xi Jinping is ending the decades-long exclusivity of successive White House occupants to reach Martian soil and then roll their technology across the surface to explore the only rocky star beyond Earth orbiting our solar system.  

The kind of involuntary monopoly that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - the mighty NASA - exercised on behalf of the United States with respect to Mars has just been shattered. On no less than nine occasions it had positioned spacecraft and rovers over the Red Planet. It is true and there is no doubt that the technological skills and capabilities of the US space agency, its industry and the scientific community behind it are far superior to those of the huge Asian country. 

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But Chinese leader Xi Jinping has just had his dream of touching down on the Red Planet fulfilled. It is clear that he is determined to take whatever steps are necessary to do battle with the new President Joe Biden in the space field, and very directly in cosmos exploration, manned spaceflight and, of course, also in the space sphere of defence.

What next?

China's first major milestones are to complete the construction of its first permanent manned space station, the first piece of the puzzle of which has been in orbit since the end of April and is expected to be completed in a couple of years. The second will be for Chinese astronauts to set foot on the moon, which is expected to be at the end of this decade. The third, and much more ambitious, complex, difficult and longer-term, is for Chinese astronauts to set foot on Mars and return to Earth.

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In the latter case, it remains to be clarified whether the United States will agree to China being part of a project of enormous dimensions, whose astronomical investments require cooperation on a global scale, which NASA wants to lead. But if Washington does not accept China's participation in the project, Beijing will pursue it unilaterally, as it is proving that it is capable of patiently tackling its challenges alone.

Turning to the recent feat on Mars, which follows the return of lunar soil samples last December. It is worth noting that the success of placing its first artefact on the Martian surface was achieved on its first attempt, a milestone of much greater complexity than a lunar landing on our natural satellite. The descent took place in the early hours of 15 May, Spanish peninsular time, over the region known as Utopia Planitia, the same area where the first US Martian probe, Viking 2, landed in 1976.

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The first thing the six-wheeled Zhurong rover did was to deploy its solar panels, recharge its batteries, activate its communications antenna, check that its on-board equipment was in good condition and send its first signals to technicians at the Beijing Control Centre. But it remains static on the surface module, where it will stay for several days, until Chinese technicians check the conditions and obstacles in its environment.

When the project's chief engineer, Professor Zhang Rongqiao, gets the green light from the Chinese Space Agency, the Zhurong rover will be ordered to release the tethers that keep it attached to the surface module. It will then be ordered down a two-lane ramp, where it will roll onto the Martian soil and a whole new world of outer space will be before it.

NASA's competing Perseverance pair

Once on Martian soil, technicians from the Space Control Centre in Beijing will check its condition again. If there are no anomalies, it will receive the telecommands sent by ground technicians to begin its exploratory work, which is scheduled to last 92 days.

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The all-terrain Zhurong is equipped with six scientific instruments. These include laser spectroscopy equipment to analyse minerals on the surface, panoramic cameras, sensors to study the surrounding weather and atmospheric conditions, a magnetometer and ground-penetrating radar. Measuring just 2 x 1.65 x 0.8 metres and 240 kilograms in mass, it is much smaller in size and mass than NASA's Perseverance - weighing around one tonne - which has been on Mars since 18 February 2021. 

The Chinese rover's exploratory purpose is to find water ice deposits on the surface and in the subsurface, to study the climatology, topography and geology of the area it moves through, searches aimed at verifying the possible existence of past or present life and habitability for future manned missions to Mars.

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NASA's monopoly, which had been a reality since the first successful descent of the Viking 2 mission in September 1976, is over. Since then it has been supplemented by eight other exploratory missions, many of them accompanied by all-terrain wheeled vehicles. In addition to the recent Perseverance rover, which is still on course to be complemented by the Ingenuity helicopter, the all-terrain rover Curiosity, which has been in operation on Mars since 6 August 2012, is also on the ground.

There is also the InSight science laboratory, which has been in static operation since 26 November 2018. The Mars Pathfinder surface module and the pioneering Mars rover Sojourner, which arrived on 4 July 1997, but whose communications were lost at the end of September 1997, have already been decommissioned. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on 4 and 25 January 2004 respectively, are now deactivated. The first one expired in March 2010 and the second one in June 2018. In addition, the Phoenix surface module, which landed on 25 May 2008, ended its work in early November 2008.