As NASA Stalls on Mars, China and Russia Test the Waters

Posted by: Mike Pallante on February 23, 2011 at 5:40PM
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Keeping Mars Exploration Alive

Somewhere in a barren red wasteland of sub zero temperatures and poison gas a set of whirring wheels went silent and an electronic eye closed, maybe forever. Spirit, one of the two Mars Rovers landed by NASA on January 3 2004, traveled 4.8 miles, got stuck and eventually stopped all radio communications. Before a cold radio silence, Spirit sent back images which suggest underground liquid water remains on the red planet. While Spirit's electronic eyes may be closed for good but a joint venture between Russia and China in October 2011 to study ancient basis where liquid water may once have been may keep exploration of our closest neighbor alive.

Probing the Future

On October 13 2009 Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladamir Putin held the 14th in a series of annual meetings in Bejing. At the meeting Putin and Dr. Sun Layiyan of the Chinese National Space Administration signed the 2010-2012 China-Russia Space Cooperation Project Outline, which included plans launch a Chinese probe to Mars using Russia's Phobos carrier rocket in Ocotober of 2011. China's probe, the YH-1, will focus attention on areas of Mars that may have had liquid surface water 3 billion years ago. Initial research suggested that 3.8 billion years ago, Mars' atmosphere dissipated and most of the surface water evaporated. Without an atmosphere, the Red planet became an frigid wasteland. However, observations from Spirit, Opportunity and the Mars Orbiter indicate that more recently, portions of Mars' equatorial region may have been warm enough to sustain lakes of liquid water over 20 kilometers wide.

Freak Out in a Moonage Daydream - A Mars Water Theory Emerges

Observations in the Ares Vallis, a rocky portion of the equator, indicate vast gashes and basins in the Martian surface. The nature of these canyons appear similar to the type of canyon made on earth when a large body of water is suddenly turned from a solid to a gas without the intermediary liquid form. Evidence from Spirit provides an explanation. If indeed Mars retains ice under the surface then some time before 3 billion years ago an event, such as a major asteroid strike or volcanic activity, may have tilted Mars towards the sun. The sun's heat melted underground ice which created gasses and the canyons. The gasses then formed an atmosphere which trapped solar energy and heat. The warmer Mars could sustain liquid water created by underground stores of ice. So the theory goes. It’s up to China and Russia to prove it.

China's Space Program Picks up Speed

China's space program is young, compared to that of Russia and the United States. And without the pressure of a cold war to expedite things they've progressed cautiously and carefully. Still, in 2003 China became only the third country to put a man, Yang Liwei, in space. In 2009 China followed up by placing a crew of 2, Fei Junglong and Nie Haisheng, in space via their Scenzhou space capsule. In 2010, China launched 15 rockets safely into space -- half as many as Russia (31) and equally as many as the US. Plans to launch a second Martian probe without the help of Russia's rockets are tentatively schedules as early as 2013. That same year China intends to follow up the successful placement of the Chang'e-2 satellite in orbit around the moon by landing Chang'e-3 on the lunar surface.

Commencing Countdown: Engines On

Spirit's only company may be from China for a long time. With recent shakeups in American Space Policy most of our launch fleet has been grounded, while new means of space conveyance are designed. Luckily for Spirit, China is committed to designing a space program to equal America and Russia in the coming decades.

Since the end of the cold war and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pacts in the early 90's, space travel ceased to be a closely guarded military secret. Space exploration has taken on a cooperative and purely scientific role as demonstrated by the International Space Station built by the former Soviet enemy turned friend Russia and the United States. That arm of friendship-in-technology has now been extended between Russia and China.

Also, the growing private rocket and space flight industry may leave the grunt work of getting into orbit to private industry and focus public resources on in-space research and development. If politics permits, we may yet see the day when three of the world's greatest superpowers, as Bill Hicks would say, “Explore space together as one people.”

How does the song go? “There's a star man waiting in the sky, he told us not to blow it, because he knows its all worthwhile.”