China’s Mars mission is a glimpse into its space ambitions. But we’re not in a space race yet

NASA is set to launch its fourth Mars rover mission today.

The mission includes a micro-helicopter that will attempt the first flight on the red planet.

But by the time it arrives around March next year, another rover from China will be preparing to touch down.

Both missions have prompted a great deal of speculation about a new 21st century space race.

Last time it was the world’s two biggest superpowers, Russia and the United States, competing to send a man to the Moon.

But this time another major superpower has entered the mix.

Perseverance — as the US rover is called — is part of an ambitious long-term NASA program to capture ground samples and transport them back to earth, where they can be studied in unprecedented detail.

The mini-helicopter experiment aims to see whether it’s possible to carry out close-range aerial surveys of Mars covering more ground than a rover could.

China’s mission, on the other hand, is ambitious in other ways.

The Tianwen-1 probe — named after a classic poem titled ‘heavenly questions’ — blasted off from China’s