One day after the UAE Hope job Mars, China’s more ambitious spacecraft Tianwen-1, with modern instruments, a lander and a six-wheeled rover, reaches orbit around the red planet on Wednesday after a seven-month voyage from Earth.
Tianwen-1’s arrival just eight days before NASA’s $ 2.4 billion Perseverance Rover enter the Martian atmosphere and descends to the floor of the Jezero crater to look for signs of microbial life in and around an ancient river delta and deposits of lake.
Persistence is the most technologically advanced spacecraft ever sent to Mars, but Tianwen-1, the first Chinese mission to the red planet and its most sophisticated space probe to date, demonstrates the growing maturity and reach of China’s space program.
CGTN
“Tianwen-1 is going to orbit a land with the first attempt, land and release a rover, and coordinate observations with a orbit,” mission managers wrote before the launch in the journal Nature Astronomy. “No planetary missions have ever been implemented in this way. If successful, it would mean a major technical breakthrough.”
Tianwen-1, launched 23 July 2020, from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island, took seven months to complete its long flight to Mars. The probe reached its target on Wednesday and fired its main engine for about 15 minutes to slow down enough to be captured by the gravity of the red planet.
“China’s first Mars probe, Tianwen-1, has successfully entered the orbit of the red planet after a major ‘brake’ to slow down and be captured by the gravity of Mars,” said CGTN, an Englishman. channel, tweeted.
The mother ship Tianwen-1, which will remain in orbit during its two-year mission, is equipped with seven instruments, including high- and medium-resolution cameras; a ground penetrating radar; a mineralogy spectrometer; a magnetometer; and two charged particle detectors.
The orbit is expected to release in May a landing craft that will descend to a rocket-powered contact on a wide plain of 2,000 miles, known as Utopia Planitia.
The 530-pound rover will drive to the surface, firmly locked to the top deck of the lander. If all goes well, the retractable slopes will unfold and the rover will drive itself to the surface for a planned 90-day mission.
Equipped with six instruments, including a multispectral camera, a terrain camera, a ground penetrating radar, magnetic field detector, meteorological sensors and others, the rover will communicate with flight controllers on earth using the Tianwen-1 orbit as a relief station. .
China has successfully sent two robbers to the moon, including one that ended up on the other side that had never been visited before. An attempt to send an orbit to Mars on top of a Russian rocket in 2011 failed when the Zenit booster failed.
NASA is the clear world leader in Mars exploration and successfully lands eight spacecraft on the Martian surface: two Vikings in 1976; the Mars Pathfinder rover in 1997; the twins Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, in 2004; the stationary Phoenix lander in 2008; the nuclear-powered Curiosity rover in 2012; and the stationary InSight lander in 2018.
InSight and Curiosity are still in operation, as are three NASA orbits.
Perseverance, an upgraded version of Curiosity and four times heavier than its Chinese cousin, is the most advanced rover of all. It is equipped with modern cameras and instruments to search for signs of microbial life.
It will also use a small experimental helicopter – a first on Mars – and collect rock and soil samples for eventual return to Earth through a joint NASA European Space Agency mission at the end of the decade.
According to the Chinese, they are also planning a Mars monster return mission around 2030.