Tianwen-1 spacecraft mission of China completed historic Mars landing
On Saturday, the Chinese spacecraft that was uncrewed landed on the surface of Mars successfully. According to Xinhua, a state news agency, the spacecraft landed on a vast plain. After the United States, China is the second spacefaring nation to land on the Red Planet.
The spaceship landed on a site known as Utopia Planitia. Xinhua said that it leaves Chinese footage on Mars for the first time in history.
The rover is going to study the planet’s atmosphere and surface soil. Zhurong will also search for signs of ancient life, including any sub-surface ice and water, that will use ground-penetrating radar.
Tianwen-1, which is also called Questions to Heaven, a Chinese poem written two millennia ago, is considered the first independent mission to Mars from China.
In July last year, the five-tonne spacecraft took off from the southern Chinese island of Hainan. The powerful Long March 5 rocket launched the spaceship.
Tianwen-1 reached Mars in February After more than six months in transit, and it had been there in orbit since then.
On Friday, the footage of a Chinese robot was imprinted on the surface of Mars.
Since February, the Tianwen-1 had been orbiting Mars, and on Friday afternoon, it released a shielded capsule toward the surface. The rover Zhurong was inside, pulled to the back of a landing vehicle, fired thrusters, and deployed parachutes to slow itself down. The lead scientist of the Royal Institution of Australia and astronomer at Swinburne University, Alan Duffy, said that China took part in an elite club of spacefaring nations with this historic landing.
Comments on the landing
A member of the Perseverance team and a planetary scientist at the Queensland University of Technology, David Flannery, said they heard very little information about this mission from CNSA. It is unlike NASA, which releases images of the landing within minutes of them arriving.
On Friday, associate director of NASA’s science mission directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, tweeted that with the global science community, he looks forward to the essential contributions this mission will make to understand the red planet.
For Martian exploration, the last ten months have been busy.
Tianwen-1 was one of three spacecraft launched to Mars in July 2020. The United Arab Emirates launched Hope orbiter, which will survey the atmosphere of Mars from space. It arrived into orbit in February. It happened not long after Perseverance reached the surface of Mars.
