After several months orbiting Mars, a Chinese rover successfully touched
down on the Martian surface Friday, making China the second nation, after
the United States, to achieve a soft landing on the red planet.
The rover, named Zhurong after the Chinese god of fire, is part of China's
Tianwen-1 mission, which launched in July 2020. The landing is a major
milestone for China's space agency, which has advanced rapidly in just a few
decades.
Few details about the Tianwen-1 mission have been made public, but the Mars
probe and its accompanying rover are designed to map the Martian surface and
search for signs of life on the planet.
The China National Space Administration said in a statement Friday that the
Tianwen-1 spacecraft "has functioned normally" since it's launch last year
and has collected a "huge amount of scientific data."
The Zhurong rover landed Friday shortly after 7 p.m. ET in a region of Mars
known as Utopia Planitia. The vast, icy plain was also where NASA's
now-defunct Viking 2 lander touched down in 1976.
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, congratulated China's space agency shortly after the landing
was confirmed. "Together with the global science community, I look forward
to the important contributions this mission will make to humanity's
understanding of the Red Planet,"
he wrote on Twitter.
China's Tianwen-1 mission is a key part of the country's lofty ambitions for
space exploration. In December 2020, a Chinese probe landed on the moon and
subsequently returned to Earth with a cache of lunar samples. As a result,
China became only the third country, after the U.S. and the former Soviet
Union, to accomplish such a feat.
In late April, China launched into orbit the first module for a planned
space station. Rocket debris from that launch later fell back to Earth,
crashing into the Indian Ocean and drawing criticism from NASA Administrator
Bill Nelson and others over China's handling of the incident.
This year has been one for Mars missions. In addition to China's Zhurong
rover, the red planet is playing host to several other new spacecraft.
NASA's Perseverance rover successfully touched down on the Martian surface
on Feb. 18 and officially began collecting science data this week.
Previously, the rover served as a communications base for a tiny
experimental helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, which conducted the first
powered, controlled flights on another planet.
In February, the United Arab Emirates' Hope probe also entered into orbit
around Mars, making the UAE only the fifth nation or entity to do so. The
spacecraft is designed to circle Mars and study the red planet's atmosphere.