China’s Mars rover drove from its touchdown platform and commenced exploring the floor on Saturday, state-run Xinhua information company mentioned, making the nation solely the second nation to land and function a rover on the Crimson Planet.
The launch final July of the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which carried the Zhurong rover, marked a significant milestone in China’s house programme. Tianwen-1 touched down on an enormous northern lava plain referred to as the Utopia Planitia per week in the past and beamed again its first photographs of the floor a number of days later.
The Mars probe and rover are anticipated to spend round three months taking photographs, harvesting geographical knowledge, and gathering and analysing rock samples. The six-wheeled, solar-powered, 240-kilogramme (530-pound) Zhurong is called after a Chinese language legendary hearth god.
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China has now despatched astronauts into house, powered probes to the Moon and landed a rover on Mars — essentially the most prestigious of all prizes within the competitors for dominion of house. The US and Russia are the one different international locations to have reached Mars, and solely the previous has operated a rover on the floor.
A number of US, Russian and European makes an attempt to land rovers on Mars have failed up to now, most not too long ago in 2016 with the crash-landing of the Schiaparelli joint Russian-European spacecraft. The newest profitable arrival got here in February, when US house company NASA landed its rover Perseverance, which has since been exploring the planet. The US rover launched a small robotic helicopter on Mars which was the first-ever powered flight on one other planet.
China has come a great distance in its race to meet up with the USA and Russia, whose astronauts and cosmonauts have a long time of expertise in house exploration. It efficiently launched the primary module of its new house station final month with hopes of getting it crewed by 2022 and finally sending people to the Moon.
Final week a phase of the Chinese language Lengthy March 5B rocket disintegrated over the Indian Ocean in an uncontrolled touchdown again to Earth. That drew criticism from the USA and different nations for a breach of etiquette governing the return of house particles to Earth, with officers saying the remnants had the potential to hazard life and property.
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