BEIJING (AP) – A Chinese spacecraft went into orbit around Mars on Wednesday on an expedition to land a rover on the surface and look for signs of ancient life, authorities announced in a relevant step in the most ambitious space mission. country so far.
The arrival of Tianwen-1 after a journey of seven months and about 475 million kilometers is part of an unusual explosion of activity on Mars: a UAE spacecraft orbited the planet on Tuesday red, and an American rover is expected to arrive next week.
The Chinese space agency said the combination of five-ton orbiter and rover fired its engine to reduce its speed, allowing the gravity of Mars to capture it.
“Entry into orbit has been successful … becoming the first artificial satellite of Mars in our country,” the agency announced.
The mission is bold even for a space program that has amassed a steady stream of achievements and brought prestige to the ruling Communist Party of China.
If all goes as planned, the rover will be separated from the spacecraft in a few months and will safely touch Mars, making China the second nation to achieve this feat. The rover, a solar-powered vehicle the size of a golf cart, will collect data on groundwater and look for evidence that the planet may have had microscopic life.
Tianwen, the title of an ancient poem, means “Search for Heavenly Truth.”
Landing a spaceship on Mars is notoriously difficult. The shattered Russian and European spacecraft scatter the landscape along with a failed American lander. About a dozen orbits failed. In 2011, a Chinese orbiter linked to Mars that was part of a Russian mission did not leave Earth orbit.
Only the United States has successfully touched Mars, eight times, starting with two Viking missions in the 1970s. Today there is a lander and an American rover in operation.
China’s attempt will involve a parachute, rocket fire and airbags. Its proposed landing site is a vast rocky plain called Utopia Planitia, where the U.S. Viking 2 landing landed in 1976.
Prior to the arrival this week of the Chinese spacecraft and the orbit of the UAE, six other spacecraft were already operating around Mars: three Americans, two Europeans and one Indian.
The last three missions were launched in July to take advantage of the close alignment between Earth and Mars that occurs only once every two years.
A NASA explorer named Perseverance points to a landing on February 18th. He will also look for signs of ancient microscopic life, picking up rocks that will return to Earth in about a decade.
China’s secret space program, linked to the military, has accumulated a number of achievements. In December, it brought lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s. China was also the first country to land a spacecraft on the little-explored band of the Moon in 2019.
China is also building a permanent space station and is planning a manned lunar mission and a possible permanent research base on the Moon, although no dates have been proposed yet.
Although most contacts with NASA are blocked by Congress and China does not participate in the International Space Station, it has increasingly cooperated with the European Space Agency and countries such as Argentina, France and Austria. At first, China cooperated with the Soviet Union and then with Russia.