China’s probe successfully landed on Mars

China’s Tianwen 1 probe successfully landed on the surface of Mars on May 15, marking a historic milestone on the country’s way to conquering space.

The Global Times (China) on the morning of May 15 reported on the successful landing on Mars of the Tianwen 1 mission. According to RT (Russia), the Tianwen 1 (Tianwen-1) spacecraft of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) was successfully launched from Wenchang Launch Site on July 23, 2020 and orbited Mars since February 10 this year. This interplanetary mission is China’s second attempt to reach the “Red Planet” after the 2011 Mars mission of the Huang Huo 1 (Yinghuo-1) probe. Citing CNSA sources, Chinese state media confirmed that the Tianwen 1 spacecraft successfully landed the Zhu Rong (Zurong) rover on the Martian surface on the morning of May 15. Thien Van 1, weighing 5,000kg, includes an orbiter, a lander and a golf cart-sized rover called Chuc Dung, named after an ancient fire god in the god of fire. Chinese phone. Carrying the Chuc Dung rover, the lander endured “seven minutes of horror” as it plowed through the Martian atmosphere on a parachute support lander. The spacecraft landed in Utopia Planitia, the same area where NASA’s Viking 2 mission landed in 1976. Watch a simulation video of the Chinese lander’s landing on Mars: (Source: Global Times) Earlier, in a statement on the same day, CNSA said, “The Tianwen 1 probe has been operating normally since its successful launch on July 23, 2020”. The agency added that it had collected a “massive amount” of scientific data as the Tianwen 1 rover orbited Mars. “With the assessment of the flight status, the Tianwen 1 probe is scheduled to conduct a landing operation against the Utopia Planitia area at the appropriate location from the early morning of May 15 to May 19 according to the Beijing time,” the CNSA statement said. The Utopia Basin is the largest recognized basin on Mars, with a diameter of about 3,300 km. Graphic image of China’s probe landing on Mars. Photo: Space The image of Mars was taken from afar by the Thien Van 1 spacecraft. Photo: AFP. According to The Verge, China is planning to land a pair of robots on the surface of Mars, making a daring attempt to become the second country to successfully land and operate a rover on Mars. Red Planet. China launched the unmanned Tianwen-1 spacecraft from the southern island of Hainan in July 2020, with the goal of sending a rover to the surface of Mars to collect data about the source groundwater and look for possible signs of ancient life there. So far, only the US has successfully implemented the technique to bring the rover to Mars and operate it. After a journey of nearly 7 months, the Tianwen 1 spacecraft successfully moved into Mars’ orbit on February 10 and then sent back to Earth many high-definition pictures of the Red planet’s surface. Image of the surface of Mars taken by the Tianwen 1 spacecraft from a distance of 330 to 350 km. Photo: AFP. “The main mission of Tianwen 1 is to conduct a global and extensive survey of all of Mars using orbiters and to bring the probes to surface locations of scientific interest to conduct detailed investigations with precision and high resolution,” the Tianwen 1 mission’s leading scientists wrote in the journal Nature Astronomy last year. Long March 5B rocket, the same type that launched the Tianwen 1 spacecraft to Mars, during the launch event of China’s space station module in April. Photo: AFP/Getty Images Model of the Tianwen 1 probe. Photo: AFP The Tianwen 1 mission marks the latest step in China’s rapid succession of advances in space exploration. The country became the first country in history to land and operate a probe on the far side of the Moon in 2019. Beijing also completed a lunar sampling mission last December. , with launching a robot to the Moon and quickly returning it to Earth carrying soil samples. Tianwen 1 is China’s first Mars landing mission, but it’s not the country’s first attempt to send a probe to Mars. The first is a fairy orbiter called Huynh Hoa 1, launched in 2011 with Russia’s Phobos-Grunt mission. This ship did not go beyond Earth orbit after launch, plunged into the Pacific Ocean and was destroyed. Before the successful Mars landing of the Tianwen 1 mission, the US successfully landed 5 rovers on the surface of the Red planet. Most recently, on February 20, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance probe passed through the Martian atmosphere and landed on this planet, with the historic mission of bringing back the rocks to help answer the question. whether life ever existed on Mars. On May 28, 1971, the Soviet Union also launched the Mars probe Mars 3, nine days after its “twin” spacecraft, Mars 2, was launched. Illustration of the Soviet Mars 3 probe on Mars. While making a Mars landing on November 27, 1971, the Mars 2 lander crashed to the Martian surface and disappeared in a dust storm. Then, Mars 3 landed in the Ptolemaic crater area in the southern hemisphere of Mars on December 2 of the same year. At first it seemed that Mars 3’s landing went perfectly, but just 110 seconds after landing, the device disappeared in silence. Since then, the Russians have not received any signal from the ship.