India is preparing to launch a family of seemingly science-fiction robots to Mars, perhaps as soon as late 2024. The Mars Orbiter Mission 2 (MOM 2) – or Mangalyaan 2, which is Hindi for ‘Mars craft’ – is set to include a rover and a helicopter, just like a robotic NASA duo already on Mars – the Perseverance rover and now-grounded Ingenuity helicopter. A supersonic parachute and a sky crane that will lower the rover onto the Martian surface will also be part of Mangalyaan 2, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said during a presentation at the Space Applications Centre in Gujarat.
Mars is once again being targeted by ISRO
NASA pioneered the use of a Mars sky crane in 2012 with its Curiosity rover and employed it again in 2021 to get Perseverance down. The Ingenuity helicopter was attached to Perseverance’s underbelly during the journey to Mars and later deployed onto the surface for its history-making mission. India aims to accomplish similar milestones, and if successful would become the third country to land a spacecraft on Mars, after the US and China. Media reports from late last year suggest that Mangalyaan 2 will have at least four science instruments designed to study the early history of Mars, analyse its leaking atmosphere and look for a hypothesised dust ring around the planet generated by its two moons, Phobos and Deimos.