China Makes History With Successful Mars Landing

China has become the second country in history to safely land its rover on the surface of Mars, a triumph for Beijing’s increasingly bold space ambitions.

The Tianwen-1 spacecraft was launched in July last year, and it had been orbiting Mars since February this year. The mission consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover.

So far only the United States has successfully managed to land its rovers on the planet and also deploy them for exploration. The former Soviet Union did manage to land on Mars, but the mission only a partial success as they lost contact soon after landing.

The rover, named Zhurong, will now survey the landing site before departing from its platform to conduct inspections. Named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, Zhurong has six scientific instruments including a high-resolution topography camera.

It will study the planet’s surface soil and atmosphere. Zhurong will also look for signs of ancient life, including any sub-surface water and ice, using a ground-penetrating radar.

Zhurong has ground-penetrating radar, which is expected to reveal the geological processes that led to the formation of the red planet. Zhurong’s spectrometer includes a laser-based technology that can zap rocks to study them.

Several US, Russian and European attempts to land rovers on Mars have failed in the past, most recently in 2016 with the crash-landing of the Schiaparelli joint Russian-European spacecraft.

The latest successful arrival came in February, when US space agency NASA landed its rover Perseverance, which has since been exploring the planet.