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China Mars Mission: historic Mars spacecraft completes landing
The Tianwen-1 spacecraft landed on a site on a vast plain known as Utopia Planitia, “leaving a Chinese footprint on Mars for the first time,” Xinhua said.
Reports Scientific American magazine.
The Tianwen-1 spacecraft landed on a site on a vast plain known as Utopia Planitia, “leaving a Chinese footprint on Mars for the first time,” Xinhua said.
The craft left its parked orbit at about 1700 GMT on Friday. The landing module separated from the orbiter three hours later and entered the Martian atmosphere, the official China Space News said
A solar-powered rover, named Zhurong, will now survey the landing site before departing from its platform to conduct inspections.
Named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, Zhurong has six scientific instruments including a high-resolution topography camera.
Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven”, after a Chinese poem written two millennia ago, is China's first independent mission to Mars. A probe co-launched with Russia in 2011 failed to leave the Earth's orbit.
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After more than six months in transit, Tianwen-1 reached the Red Planet in February where it had been in orbit since.
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Tianwen-1 was one of three that reached Mars in February, with US rover Perseverance successfully touching down on Feb 18 in a huge depression called Jezero Crater, more than 2,000km away from Utopia Planitia.
Hope — the third spacecraft that arrived at Mars in February this year — is not designed to make a landing. Launched by the United Arab Emirates, it is currently orbiting above Mars gathering data on its weather and atmosphere.
The first successful landing ever was made by NASA's Viking 1 in July 1976 and then by Viking 2 in September that year. A Mars probe launched by the former Soviet Union landed in December 1971, but communication was lost seconds after landing.
China is pursuing an ambitious space programme. It is testing reusable spacecraft and is also planning to establish manned lunar research station.
In a commentary published on Saturday, Xinhua said China was “not looking to compete for leadership in space” but was committed to “unveiling the secrets of the universe and contributing to humanity's peaceful use of space”.
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