Letters | Why spend billions on the moon and Mars when millions are suffering on Earth?

Name: China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft waits for best trajectory to return to Earth
Uploaded: 2020-12-09T23:15:17.000Z
Duration: 1 min 7 s
Description: China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft waits for best trajectory to return to Earth

Recent space missions have budgets ranging from US$200 million to US$2.5 billion. The public have a right to know about the risks of failure and debate how resources are to be prioritised in terms of earthly problems and heavenly ambitions

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An Atlas V rocket, carrying the Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover for Nasa, lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 30. Photo: AP

Letters

Published: 7:15am, 10 Dec 2020Updated: 7:15am, 10 Dec 2020

With China’s Chang’e 5 moon probe and Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft hitting the headlines, the global community is also looking forward to more updates from the three Mars missions launched by the US, the UAE and China during the ideal time window in July.

While the United States and the United Arab Emirates named their rover, helicopter and orbiter, which are expected to reach the red planet next February, Perseverance, Ingenuity and Hope, the Chinese spacecraft Tianwen-1 paid tribute to Qu Yuan, the ancient poet and his “Questions to Heaven”.

Yet, given that mission budgets range from US$200 million to US$2.5 billion, the public have a right to more information about the risks attendant on such missions, and a right to debate about what to prioritise in using resources for earthly problems and heavenly ambitions.

Despite recent successful missions including Nasa’s InSight in 2018, it is important to recognise the enormous risks of failure associated with sending spacecrafts to Mars: two thirds of such missions have been unsuccessful. In 1999, an error in unit conversion resulted in a Nasa orbiter burning up in Mars’ atmosphere.

01:07

China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft waits for best trajectory to return to Earth

Yinghuo-1, the Chinese space probe launched in 2011, was declared lost after failing to even leave the Earth’s orbit. What measures do space agencies take to prevent more of the failures that have caused enormous financial loss?

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.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Letters | Why spend billions on the moon and Mars when millions are suffering on Earth?

Letters | Why spend billions on the moon and Mars when millions are suffering on Earth?