China successfully landed Tiawen-1 on the surface of Mars

China’s Tiawen-1 spacecraft has successfully landed on Mars, starting a mission to explore this planet.

Photo: India Express It is known that on May 15, China confirmed that Tiawen-1 had successfully dropped the Zurong rover to the surface of Mars. This is a historic milestone that makes China the second country to successfully launch a probe on the Red Planet. In the past, only NASA has succeeded in landing and operating probes on the red planet. (The Soviet Mars 3 spacecraft landed on Mars in 1971 and remained in contact for only about 20 seconds.) The landing took place at Utopia Planitia, a flat land on Mars and the same area where NASA’s Viking 2 rover landed in 1976. After landing, the lander dropped the Zhurong rover – Powered six-wheeled robot named after the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology. The spacecraft carries an integrated toolkit, including two cameras, a Mars subsurface probe radar, a Mars magnetic field detector and a Martian meteorological tracker. “This is the hardest place to land in the solar system,” said Emily Lakdawalla, author of “The Design and Engineering of Curiosity.” China’s success in its first attempt indicates that it is one of the most capable space agencies.” The European Space Agency also tried to land on Mars in 2003, but its Beagle 2 probe had problems. The ExoMars Schiaparelli spacecraft – another ESA (European Space Agency) effort also crashed in 2016 after software mis-estimated its altitude during a landing attempt. Photo: The Verge The Tianwen-1 spacecraft launched from Wenchang Launch Site in Hainan Province, China last July, embarking on a seven-month trip to Mars. China said that “Tianwen-1 has been operating normally since it entered the orbit of the Red Planet,” the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said in a statement on the morning of May 15. CNSA revealed that Tianwen-1 has collected a large amount of data and photos taken from the orbit of Mars. Andrew Jones, a journalist covering China’s activities in space, said that Tiawen-1 has been exploring the Utopia Planitia landing site for more than three months while orbiting Mars. Now, after a successful landing, the Zhurong rover will embark on a mission that will last at least three months to study Mars’ climate and geology. “The main mission of the Tiawen-1 mission is to conduct a comprehensive and extensive survey of the entire planet using orbiters and to bring the probes to surface locations of great scientific interest. focused to conduct detailed investigations with precision and high resolution,” the leading scientists wrote in Nature Astronomy last year. It is known that this expedition vehicle weighs about 240kg, nearly double the weight of China’s previous Yuto Moon. The CNSA said last month: “The Mars rover Zhurong is hoped to ignite the fire of China’s interplanetary exploration and guide humanity into the vast unknowns of outer space.” Photo: The Verge Before Tiawen-1 successfully landed on Mars, the United States also successfully landed 5 rovers on the surface of the Red Planet. More recently, on February 20, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance probe passed through the atmosphere of Mars and landed on the planet on a historic mission to recover rocks to help answer the question. whether life ever existed on Mars. Although this CNSA project is more than four decades behind NASA, this success of China shows that its space engineers are rapidly closing the gap with the US. Tiawen-1 marked a big step for China in the field of space exploration. Previously, China also became the first country to successfully land and operate a probe in the dark side of the Moon in 2019. Recently, China also successfully launched its first core module. Chinese space station. In the future, this will be inhabited by groups of astronauts in space. Earlier this year, China, in partnership with Russia, announced plans to build a space station on the surface of the Moon.