(MENAFN- AzerNews) By Alimat Aliyeva
In mid-February, NASA announced that the Perseverance rover was
at risk of losing the ability to shoot lasers at Martian rocks
because one of its instruments was not working properly due to one
of the two covers of the SHERLOC scientific instrument partially
open. This hindered the possibility of collecting scientific data, Azernews reports, citing foreign media
outlets.
In mid-January, the US space Agency had to cancel a historic
mission on the red planet using the Ingenuity helicopter, because
one of its rotor blades was damaged during landing. Initially, this
space instrument was intended to test the technologies necessary
for flights in the Martian atmosphere, but this failure put an end
to an important milestone in interplanetary aviation.
All this forced NASA to postpone the schedule of its Martian
operations, given that it was left behind in the Martian space
race.
Amid NASA's setbacks, which were also related to budgetary
uncertainty, China is implementing its plan to collect Martian
rocks and deliver them to Earth around 2030 thanks to the Tianwen-3
mission.
According to the chief designer of the Mars orbiter and the
Tianwen-1 rover, Sun Zehzhou, the Tianwen-3 mission consists of
"extracting rock samples and then taking off from the surface of
Mars" to analyze these "stones using the most modern tools here on
Earth," so "scientists will be able to better answer to such
fundamental questions as: was there still water on Mars and did it
support any form of life in the past?"
The country's desire to carry out an unprecedented mission was
stated earlier and included in the development plans of the Chinese
National Space Administration for 2021-2025.
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