Typical! You wait ages for a Mars mission, and suddenly three turn up at once …
China's doing it. The United Arab Emirates are doing it. The USA as well, of course they're on it as well — seems everyone is going to Mars these days. Emily takes a good hard look at each of the current Mars missions, from an orbiting spacecraft examining the red planet's weather, to a couple of rovers, one dropped to the surface by sky crane. There's even a tiny helicopter! it's all happening on Mars in 2021.
Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.
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Things we talked about in this episode:
NASA Mars Robot Family t-shirt — get yours now!
China’s Tianwen 1 mission
Tianwen 1’s space selfie
Perseverance on twitter: @NASAPersevere
Video of Perseverance's landing
Image taken of the landing taken from Mars orbit!
Perseverance’s first image from the surface
The non-discovery of Martian life in a meteorite
NASA Mars rover family portrait
Since you’re here … You might be interested in a new, sciencey podcast: Science, possibly — science-adjacent stories by Chris Stewart and James Lees.