Getting closer to the neighbour

Perseverance remains crucial in exploring the mysteries around Mars

Three Mars missions, from the US, China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are due to launch in July. The US and China are established space going nations, but it is the UAE’s first interplanetary mission.

These missions will seek to establish if life existed sometime in the past on the red planet. The simultaneous launches are driven by astronomical imperatives. At their closest, Earth and Mars are “only” 55 million km apart. The two planets are more than 400 million mm apart at the furthest.

The easiest way to understand this, is to think of pizzas. Planetary orbits are pizza-shaped, or