Next stop Mars: 3 spacecraft arriving in quick succession
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- After hurtling hundreds of millions of miles through space since last summer, three robotic explorers are ready to hit the brakes at Mars.The stakes — and anxiety — are sky high.The United Arab Emirates’ orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on Feb. 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth — a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars.Both the UAE and China are newcomers at Mars, where more than half of Earth’s emissaries have failed. China’s first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth’s orbit.“We are quite excited as engineers and scientists, at the same time quite stressed and hap...
