A Chinese spacecraft has arrived at Mars and is investigating its surface, the country said.
The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is one of three missions to the red planet arriving this month. It comes a day after a UAE spacecraft successfully orbited the planet, and before the arrival of Nasa’s Perseverance Rover.
The Chinese mission consists of a rover and a orbit in combination. For now, the two will float on the red planet, but in a few months, the rover will come loose and soar to the surface.
If so, he hopes to gather information about water beneath the surface of Mars, as well as to search for signs of ancient alien life on the planet.
Tianwen is the title of an ancient poem, and means ‘Quest for Heavenly Truth’.
The arrival at Mars is the first time that the country has successfully undertaken the journey, after the attempt with Russia in 2011 could not get through the orbit of the earth.
But the hardest part of the mission is landing a rover on the Martian surface, an intricate feat that has so far only been achieved by US Nasa.
It is notoriously difficult to land a spacecraft on Martian soil, and China’s effort will include a parachute, rocket fire and airbags. The proposed landing site is inside the massive, rock-strewn Utopia Planitia, where the American Viking 2 lander hit in 1976. The solar-powered rover – about the size of a golf cart – is expected to run for about three months. and the job for two years.
China plans to send its rover to the surface in May, where they are looking for groundwater as well as evidence of possible ancient life.
The solar-powered worker weighs 240 kg and has to work for about three months, while the Tianwen-1 track is expected to last two years.
The spacecraft crashed from Earth seven months ago aboard a Long March 5 carrier rocket from Hainan Island, China.
Last week, Tianwen-1 – or the Quest Tor Heavenly Truth – returned its first photograph of Mars, taken 1.4 million kilometers from the planet.
The three arrivals at Mars all depart in July and take advantage of a relatively close alignment between Mars and Earth that is only available every two years.
Additional reporting by agencies