Mars probes in many countries have set a small goal for China to compete on Mars next year.

　　CCTV News:There is such a planet, which lies between the earth and Jupiter and is the fourth closest planet to the sun. If you look at it with the naked eye, it will show a more prominent red color than the surrounding stars in the night sky of the earth. The ancients in China called it "as bright as fire". This star is Mars. Soon, we will have the opportunity to get in touch with it. On November 14th, the National Space Administration made public the Mars exploration mission in China for the first time, and planned to implement it in 2020.

　　The mission of Mars exploration this time is the lander hovering obstacle avoidance test, which mainly simulates the process of lander hovering, obstacle avoidance and slow descent in the Mars environment at the ground test site, and comprehensively verifies the correctness of its design.

　　The lander hovering obstacle avoidance test is the largest comprehensive test site for the landing of extraterrestrial objects in Asia. This test simulates the gravity environment of Mars, and the gravity acceleration on Mars is about one third of that of the Earth. According to the plan, China will launch the first Mars exploration mission next year. The goal is to realize the three tasks of "circling, landing and patrolling" through one launch mission, carry out global and comprehensive exploration of Mars, and conduct fine patrol exploration of key areas on the surface of Mars.

　　Why launch next year? Only once every 26 months.

　　Mars is not something we can go to if we want to. Do you know why we chose to launch in 2020?

　　This is because there will be a "Mars Rush to the Sun" every 26 months. At that time, the sun, the earth and Mars will be in a straight line. At this point in time, Mars exploration will take the shortest flight route and save the most fuel. The closest window to the current time is 2020, so China’s Mars exploration mission is also aimed at this window.

　　Moreover, not only China, but also the United States will launch "Mars 2020" next year, India will launch "Man Garian 2" next year, and UAE hopes to launch "Hope" &hellip next year; … Many Mars probes from all over the world have chosen to compete on Mars next year.

　　Mars exploration "two steps" and one step to realize "round tour"

　　Four hundred years ago, Kepler wrote in a letter to Galileo: "We should build ships and sails suitable for flying to the sacred sky, and then there will be such pioneers who will not shrink back in the face of boundless space." For the first Mars exploration, Chinese scientists have been working hard. Compared with other countries’ fire exploration missions in the past, China’s Mars has to complete the soft landing of the Mars probe at one time, which has a high starting point and is more difficult.

　　Zhang Rong Bridge, chief designer of the first Mars exploration mission: put forward a two-step route. In the process of demonstration in 2013, one step will realize winding, landing and patrolling, and the other step will complete sampling and returning, so as to make our country reach the advanced level in the field of Mars exploration by 2030.

　　Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the probe system for the first Mars exploration mission: For some time, the implementation of the lunar exploration project has been a technical traction. In terms of technical ability and technical level, we have the technical ability and technical level to realize the circumnavigation, landing and inspection at one time.

　　Sun Zezhou said that based on the technology in the lunar exploration project, China has carried out pre-research on the key technologies of Mars exploration. The research and development of many new technologies needed for the characteristics of Mars exploration is also progressing steadily. For example, the parachute used to land on Mars is a breakthrough technology development.

　　Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the probe system for the first Mars exploration mission: Our earth’s parachute is opened at subsonic speed, and the Mars probe is to open at supersonic speed. In this way, under a complicated aerodynamic condition, the design of the umbrella still needs a lot of work for us before we can really master it.

　　Why do we need to explore Mars when the road is too long?

　　Going to Mars is really not that easy. Apart from the window period and technical difficulties, there is also the problem of time. It takes about 6 months to sail just to go, and with the processes of sampling and returning, it takes about 3 years for a complete round trip. Since it is so difficult, why should we explore Mars?

　　A year on Mars is 687 Earth Days, and a Mars Day is almost as long as Earth Day. There are also four seasons here, spring, summer, autumn and winter. Its diameter is half of the earth’s, its weight is one tenth of the earth’s, and its gravity is one third of the earth’s. The weightlessness is not too serious. You can still keep your feet on the ground and look up at the stars when you board Mars. It’s a little cold on Mars, with an average temperature of minus 55 degrees Celsius, reaching minus 100 degrees Celsius in the coldest night, and 20 degrees Celsius in the equatorial region at noon in summer, which is very comfortable. In addition, humans have discovered underground salt lakes on Mars.

　　At present, humans have conducted more than 230 solar system explorations. The detection result shows that among the eight planets, five dwarf planets and 165 satellites in the entire solar system, only Mars is the most similar to the Earth, and only Mars may be transformed to realize large-scale immigration. So far, we can’t find a second such planet in the universe.

　　What should I do to explore Mars this time?

　　So what are we going to do this time to explore Mars?

　　Experts say that the primary scientific problem of Mars exploration is to detect the information of life activities on Mars, including whether there was life on Mars in the past, the conditions and environment for the existence of life on Mars, as well as the origin of life and the exploration of extraterrestrial life. The second is to accumulate information for the scientific research of Mars ontology; The third is to explore the long-term transformation of Mars and the prospect of establishing a second habitat for human beings in the future.

　　Maybe in the next twenty years or so, we can see that humans will land on Mars for the first time. In the next hundred years, we may build a medium-sized Mars city on Mars. In the next thousand years, we may transform Mars into a planet suitable for human habitation.