NO fewer than three spacecraft representing three countries visit Mars this month.

The scheduled arrival of NASA's Perseverance spacecraft on February 18 will complete the trio after the United Arab Emirates successfully placed their own craft into orbit around the red planet on February 9, closely followed by the arrival of China's mission Tianwen-1 on February 10.

All three craft were launched from Earth within weeks of each other in 2020, taking advantage of the close proximity of Mars to Earth in their respective orbits around the Sun.

First to reach Mars - having travelled 300 million miles - was the UAE's Hope spacecraft, which at a cost of $200 million dollars, will undertake atmospheric and dust storm studies among other observations.

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It's a great triumph, not only as the Arab world's first interplanetary mission, but also as their first to Mars, joining an elite group of countries to have made the journey over previous decades.

Whereas the Hope craft will solely remain in orbit, China's first mission to Mars will include a separate lander which will be dispatched to the Martian surface, adding China to an even more elitist group of countries that have graced the red planet's surface, the USA and Russia being the other two nations.

The planned touchdown for China's lander is in May.

NASA's Perseverance craft will make the trio complete when it arrives to replace its resident predecessor Curiosity, a surface rover which has been active and transmitting information back to Earth since August 2012.

At a cost of $2.7 billion, Perseverance will also for the first time in history, launch a small helicopter to survey the planet's surface.