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It is expected to spend around three months there.
China has landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time in the latest advance for its space program.
The official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday that the lander had touched down, citing the China National Space Administration.
Plans call for a rover to stay in the lander for a few days of diagnostic tests before rolling down a ramp to explore an icy area of Mars known as Utopia Planitia. It will join an American one that arrived at the red planet in February.
Congratulations to CNSA’s #Tianwen1 team for the successful landing of China’s first Mars exploration rover, #Zhurong! Together with the global science community, I look forward to the important contributions this mission will make to humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet. pic.twitter.com/KexElIu8OH
— Thomas Zurbuchen (@Dr_ThomasZ) May 15, 2021
China’s first Mars landing follows its launch last month of the main section of what will be a permanent space station and a mission that brought back rocks from the moon late last year.
“China has left a footprint on Mars for the first time, an important step for our country’s space exploration,” Xinhua said in announcing the landing on one of its social media accounts.
The US has had nine successful landings on Mars since 1976. The Soviet Union landed on the planet in 1971, but the mission failed after the craft stopped transmitting information soon after touchdown.
While waiting for downloading and processing pictures and videos, check out this romantic landing animation released by CAST! Marvelous! Second half of this landing sequence was also used in China’s Lunar Rover Cheng’e Yutu missions. #Zhurong #Tianwen1 pic.twitter.com/V4WWOqAofN
— Chinese Zhurong Mars Rover (@MarsZhurong) May 15, 2021
A rover and a tiny helicopter from the American landing in February are currently exploring Mars. Nasa expects the rover to collect its first sample in July for return to Earth in a decade.
China has landed on the moon before but landing on Mars is a much more difficult undertaking because it has an extremely thin atmosphere.
Spacecraft must use heat shields for protection from the searing heat of reentry and both retro-rockets and parachutes to slow enough to prevent a crash landing. The parachutes and rockets must be deployed at precise times to land at the designated spot.
Only mini-retro rockets are required for a moon landing, and parachutes alone are sufficient for returning to Earth, which has a much bigger atmosphere.
Touchdown was at 7:18am Beijing time (23:18 GMT; 7:18 p.m. EDT), according to the State Administration of Science. Technology and Industry for National Defense.
Zhurong, named after a Chinese mythical fire god, arrives a few months behind America’s latest probe to Mars — Perseverance — as the show of technological might between the two superpowers plays out beyond the bounds of Earth.
Six-wheeled, solar-powered and roughly 240 kilograms, the Chinese rover is on a quest to collect and analyse rock samples from Mars’ surface.
#UPDATES China’s Zhurong rover touched down on Mars, state media reports, a triumph for Beijing’s increasingly bold space ambitions and a history-making feat for a nation on its first-ever Martian mission https://t.co/tHmG9wQNdf pic.twitter.com/bX5KR5Sz2Y
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) May 15, 2021
It is expected to spend around three months there.
The launch of China’s Tianwen-1 Mars probe which carried the rover last July marked a major milestone in China’s space programme.
The distance between Earth and Mars caused a delay for mission control in Beijing to confirm successful deployment of a conical heat shield, rockets and a giant parachute to control the craft’s descent.
Nasa Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen tweeted his congratulations, saying, “Together with the global science community, I look forward to the important contributions this mission will make to humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet.”
China’s Mars landing was the top trending topic on Weibo, a leading social media platform, as people expressed both excitement and pride at the achievement.
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