State media China Told that the country has successfully landed the rover Mars On this Saturday morning (15), it became the second nation in history to have an astromobile on the Red Planet.
The government news agency Xinhua said that in Chinese mythology a rover named Zurong named after the fire god landed on Mars in a pre-selected area in Utopia Planitia.
Zurong has six wheels, powered by solar energy, weighs around 240 kg and has six scientific instruments. Subsequently, it will be deployed from the probe for a three-month mission in search of signs or evidence of ancient life on the surface of Mars.
Tianwen-1 Orbiter from Mars will give its signal to the rover during the mission And then do a global survey of the planet for one year of Mars, equal to 687 Earth days. The spacecraft spent three months in orbit recognizing the landing zone before the rover was released to the surface.
Tianwen-1 was launched by the “Long March 5” rocket – Equivalent to the one that fell near the Maldives Islands in the last week – spent seven months en route to Mars on July 23 last year from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan and before entering its orbit in February.
The spacecraft sent the first picture of the planet more than a million kilometers away.
Before the rover landed, the scientific team behind Tianwen-1 said the spacecraft “would orbit a rover in the first attempt, take off and coordinate observations with an orbiter.” “No planetary mission has been implemented in this way”.
Tianwen-1 is one of three international missions launched last summer to Mars, as well as NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which landed on Mars in February, and the UAE Hope Probe, which also orbited Mars in February. logging in. Unlike missions to the US and China, the UAE probe is not to land on Mars, only to study the planet in orbit.
Three missions were launched simultaneously due to the alignment between Earth and Mars on the same side of the Sun, making travel to the Red Planet more efficient.
Tianwen-1, nicknamed “the search for heavenly truth”, hopes to gather important information about Mars’ soil, geological structure, environment, and the atmosphere, as well as the search for signs of water.
China’s ambitious space program made headlines for newspapers last weekend, when An out of control rocket fell into the Indian Ocean – Rejecting NASA for “failing to meet standards of responsibility for (its) space debris”.
The “Long March 5B” rocket launched part of China’s new space station into orbit in late April and was left to launch out of space without control until Earth’s gravity pulled it back. .
Watch the landing video:
(Translated text, Click here And read in native English).
