China also reached Mars orbit a day after the UAE
China’s first probe, Tianwen-1, entered Martian orbit a day after the UAE probe, Amal, meaning “hope.”
China’s first rover to Mars, Tianon-1, successfully orbits the Red Planet.
This happened one day after the UAE Mars rover “Omid” entered the planet’s orbit.
This makes China the sixth space agency after the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, India, and just yesterday, the United Arab Emirates to send a probe to the Red Planet.
“Tianon-1” is ready to take the next steps by successfully placing itself in the orbit of Mars. The spacecraft will detach from the spacecraft in a few months and land on a plain in the northern hemisphere called Utopia Planitia.
While China does not always share its space news immediately, we can look forward to the spacecraft’s possible landing in May.
China’s first attempt to reach the Red Planet was to launch the Yinghuo-1 orbiter in November 2011, which was launched with the Russian Phobos-Grant mission. But the orbiter never went beyond Earth orbit and burned in the Earth’s atmosphere with a Russian probe.
“Tianwen-1” means “question of the heavens” and is now a success that the “Yinguo-1” probe could not achieve. This is the first fully Chinese-led mission of this magnitude, and was built with permission from China’s National Space Agency, although some international cooperation has been done.
The probe was launched on July 23, 2020, over China’s Long March 5 rocket.
The purpose of the Tianon-1 rover is to search for ponds below the surface of Mars. The mission is much broader than the country’s previous attempt to carry out a mission to Mars. The previous orbiter weighed 115 kilograms, but the spacecraft, along with the lander and rover, weighed about 5 tons at launch.
Each of these probes will independently assess Mars in several ways. The orbiter will use a high-resolution camera plus a magnetometer, spectrometer and an ice mapping radar instrument. The orbital part of the probe also acts as a communication point between the rover and the mission control group in China.
The Tiananmen-1 rover also has extensive equipment, including meteorological and surface tools, cameras and advanced radar that will search for hidden water tanks beneath the ancient surface of Mars.
China said in a statement that these subterranean ponds on Earth could host microbial communities, so identifying them on Mars would be an important step in the search for life in other worlds.
The Tianon-1 rover will descend from the lander on its own wheels after descending from the Martian atmosphere and landing on the surface of Mars. If the Tianon-1 lander successfully lands on the surface of the Red Planet, China will be the second country after the United States to successfully operate a spacecraft on the surface of the Red Planet.
While the Soviet Union launched the first probe to the surface of Mars in 1971, the March 3 lander crashed less than two minutes after touching the surface. But on the other hand, most of the US missions on the surface of the Red Planet have been very successful, and another rover is scheduled to arrive next week.