A Long March-5 rocket, carrying an orbiter, lander, and rover as part of the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars, takes off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China’s Hainan province on July 23, 2020 .
Noel Celis | AFP | fake pictures
China launched an important mission to Mars on Thursday in what it hopes will become its first successful landing on the Red Planet.
The mission, known as Tianwen -1, will see a rover, a lander, and an orbiter launched aboard a Long rocket on March 5 from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island on Thursday. It is China’s first solo mission to Mars after a previous attempt with Russia failed several years ago.
The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation declared the launch a success and said the Tianwen-1 rover had been successfully transferred to “predetermined orbit,” according to an official post on WeChat.
Meanwhile, the United States is preparing for the launch of NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover, which is scheduled for July 30.
China’s Tianwen-1 will reach its destination seven months after launch. The orbiter will orbit Mars while the rover and lander will make a trip to the surface of the Red Planet.
Scientists in the world’s second-largest economy hope to map the geological structure of Mars, investigate the characteristics of its distribution of soil and water ice, study the composition of surface material, and further understand the environment on the planet. , according to the chief scientist of the mission. .
The United States is the only other country to have landed and operated a rover on Mars, so if China’s mission is successful, it would be a great feat.
China has placed a great emphasis on space in recent years. President Xi Jinping called on the industry earlier this year to make China a “great space power as soon as possible,” according to the state-backed China Daily.
But China has faced some setbacks to take off its ambitions from Mars. In 2011, she attempted to launch an orbiter called Yinghuo-1 on a Russian spacecraft launched by a Ukrainian rocket. But the launch ultimately failed.
And in 2017, the second launch of the Long March 5 rocket ended in failure.
But China has also seen some recent successes. It was the first nation to land a spacecraft on the so-called dark side of the moon. And earlier this year, China launched the final satellite to complete its global navigation system called Beidou.
The Mars mission in China comes after the UAE successfully launched its Mars probe, called Hope, earlier this month and as the United States prepares for its own mission to the Red Planet.
Mars’s flurry of launches has to do with time. About every 26 months, Mars and Earth are closer than usual, allowing for a launch.
The United States is slated to launch its Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover on July 30 with the goal of studying life on the planet. The rover will look for signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also indications of “past microbial life,” according to NASA.
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