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rfmcdonaldI'm as excited by China's impending launch of its first Mars probe as part of a planned long-duration study program as I am by India's successful lunar probe as I am by South Korea's development of its own rocket with Russian help.
Why? I imagined years ago, as part of a rather gloomy alternate history, that a collection of technologically advanced and competitive spacefaring powers might well launch fleets of space probes to explore the solar system, vehicles far more robust and capable than any sent in our history, with particular emphasis on probes which exploited the Grand Tour trajectories past the gas giants into the Kuiper belt like the Voyager 2.
Alas, this program of space exploration never came to be, because the United States was the only spacefaring powers capable of supporting such long-duration missions, the Soviets being concerned with inner-system probes and the ESA still developing its rockets. But now? Russia, Europe, China, India, perhaps also South Korea and Brazil, all alongside the United States, have the potential to launch a wave of massive solar system exploration. So, yay! to the three new emergent spacefaring powers of Asia, and here's to hoping for at least several more. (Not North Korea, though. Can you imagine North Korea establishing first contact with an alien civilization?)
Why? I imagined years ago, as part of a rather gloomy alternate history, that a collection of technologically advanced and competitive spacefaring powers might well launch fleets of space probes to explore the solar system, vehicles far more robust and capable than any sent in our history, with particular emphasis on probes which exploited the Grand Tour trajectories past the gas giants into the Kuiper belt like the Voyager 2.
Beginning in the mid-1970's, though, the League spacefaring powers and the United States embarked on a substantial program of unmanned exploration of the Solar System, using robotic probes. During the 1960's, Europe, Japan, and the United States had launched simple fly-by space probes to other planets in the Solar System. The images sent back by the Japanese M-1 probe to Mars in 1966, for instance, decisively demolished the hopeful beliefs of Earth-bound astronomers that Mars might yet be home to a simple biosphere, while the American Mariner 5 and Mariner 6 space probes revealed that Venus -- once thought to be a lush jungle world -- was in fact enveloped by a superheated and dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide. By 1970, these simple probes had managed to chart the atmospheres and surface features of the planets of Mars, Mercury, and Venus to a high degree of accuracy.
In the 1970's, rapid advances in long-range radio communications and informatics made possible the construction of far more sophisticated space probes. This new generation of space probes -- Europe's Explorateur series, Brazil's PLD series, the American Lewis and Clark probes, and Japan's single Meisuko Orbiter -- could theoretically work as autonomous agents entire light-hours from Earth, imaging each of their preassigned targets and transmitting these images back to earth as television pictures with only a minimum of intervention from Earth-based controllers. Power concerns were no problem, though the weak sunlight of the outer Solar System could not generate enough electricity with even the most efficient solar panel arrays; this new generation of space probes was powered by radioisotope generators, which harnessed the heat produced by the decay of radioactive elements to provide more than enough power.
The first of the long-range probes were launched in 1972, when the Explorateur-2 was sent to Mars and the PLD-1 set forth on its long voyage through space to Jupiter and then into the depths of interstellar space. (Explorateur-1 was destroyed when its first-series Hermès booster exploded upon launch.) Explorateur-2 arrived in Mars orbit at the end of the year, and to the amazement of planetary scientists the world over began radioing back high-resolution images of Mars' surface that revealed that though that world might be lifeless, the Martian surface was still being actively reshaped by natural forces.
As plans were made by ASE to dispatch two more Explorateurs to Mars in 1974, Brazil prepared to launch the PLD-2 for December of 1974. The PLD-2 was to be sent on a different course than its sister ship the PLD-1, visiting Jupiter and then Saturn. Although the two probes would be the first spacecraft to ever visit a world beyond the orbit of Mars and would provide valuable information on the two largest planets in the Solar System (and their moons); they also played an important role by gathering navigational data for the future "Grand Tour" probes. In the 1960's, a team of German scientists who had been calculating planetary orbits in the near future noticed that in the 1970's and 1980's, all five planets in the outer Solar System would be aligned on the same side of the Sun. With special planning spacecraft could be sent to explore all those worlds at a minimum cost in fuel by flying the gravitation of each planet to send the spacecraft towards the next planet. Two sequences were identified as being of particular scientific value, the first being the route Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune, the second Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto, the two being known collectively as the "Grand Tour" routes. As it happened, the robust design of the Explorateur series of probes allowed ASE to present these two missions as inexpensive and scientifically invaluable, and the two missions were approved in October of 1973.
Alas, this program of space exploration never came to be, because the United States was the only spacefaring powers capable of supporting such long-duration missions, the Soviets being concerned with inner-system probes and the ESA still developing its rockets. But now? Russia, Europe, China, India, perhaps also South Korea and Brazil, all alongside the United States, have the potential to launch a wave of massive solar system exploration. So, yay! to the three new emergent spacefaring powers of Asia, and here's to hoping for at least several more. (Not North Korea, though. Can you imagine North Korea establishing first contact with an alien civilization?)
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