Jakarta, CNN Indonesia –
China will soon join the United States as the second country to land and operate rovers in Mars.
Beijing’s Mars Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to land on the Red Planet in the coming days, as early as Saturday (15/5) morning (Friday evening Eastern time), according to China’s space agency. The landing window was extended to Wednesday (19/5).
The unmanned Tianwen-1, China’s first mission to Mars, was launched in July 2020 on a 465 million kilometer journey to reach the planet. The spacecraft entered Mars orbit in February and sent back the first photo of the planet from a distance of more than a million kilometers.
The probe “will orbit, land and release all rovers on the first try, and coordinate observations with the orbiter,” according to the scientific team behind Tianwen-1.
“No planetary mission has ever been carried out this way,” the team said.
Tianwen-1 is one of three international Mars missions launched last summer, along with NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February, and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Probe, which entered orbit around Mars, also in February. Unlike the US and Chinese missions, the UAE explorers are not meant to land on Mars – simply study the planet from orbit.
All three missions were launched around the same time due to the alignment between Mars and Earth on the same side of the sun, making travel to the red planet even more efficient.
Tianwen-1, whose name means “Search for Heavenly Truth,” hopes to gather important information about the Martian soil, geological structure, environment and atmosphere, and to search for water signs.
China’s ambitious space program sparked headlines last weekend, when a 40,000 pound rocket uncontrollably crashed into the Indian Ocean – sparking a rebuke from NASA for failing to “meet (its) standards of liability regarding space debris.”
The Long March 5B rocket launched part of China’s new space station into orbit in late April and has been left gliding through space uncontrolled until Earth’s gravity pulls it back.
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