The landing module with the “Zhurong” rover touched down in the Utopia Planitia region. The US rover “Perseverance” landed on the Red Planet back in February.
Beijing (dpa) – China has landed on Mars for the first time. The landing module of the spacecraft “Tianwen-1” touched down with the rover “Zhurong” on board on the surface of the red planet, as the Chinese space agency announced.
“Tianwen-1” broke from Earth last July and reached Mars orbit in February.
The Chinese mission is one of three flights to Mars that took off from Earth last summer. The United Arab Emirates and the USA had also sent rockets towards Mars at that time. The US rover “Perseverance” landed in February.
So far, only the US has managed to deploy reconnaissance vehicles on the Red Planet. The Soviet Union landed in the 1970s, but contact with the probe was immediately lost. The flight to the Red Planet and landing are considered extremely difficult. Only about half of previous landing attempts were successful.
A parachute and brake engines helped to slow down the Chinese probe. The vehicle initially hovered around 100 meters above the surface of Mars to identify obstacles and autonomously find a landing site. Finally, the four-legged lander touches down safely on the surface.
The maneuver was “extremely complicated”, quoted the state media Geng Yan, an employee of the Chinese space program: “Each step had only one chance. The actions were closely related. If there was just one mistake, the landing would have failed, ”said Geng.
After the successful landing, China’s state news agency Xinhua spoke of the beginning of a “new chapter” in space exploration. China’s President Xi Jinping congratulated the participating scientists.
If everything goes according to plan, the rover “Zhurong”, named after the Chinese god of fire, which touched down in the Utopia Planitia region, should wake up and work and carry out investigations for at least three months.
The rover weighs around 240 kilograms. It has six wheels and four solar panels and can move at 200 meters per hour on the surface of Mars. The rover carries scientific instruments with which information about the composition of the planet’s surface, the geological structure and the climate can be collected.
China is pushing ahead with its ambitious space program. After several successful flights to the moon, the People’s Republic began building its own space station at the end of April. A missile of the type “Langer Marsch 5B” brought the 22-ton module “Tianhe” into space. It should form the core module of the space station, which should be completed “around 2022”.
In the coming weeks, two more space flights are to follow one after the other. In May, the cargo spacecraft “Tianzhou 2” could dock with fuel and supplies. Three astronauts are also preparing to fly to Tianhe on board Shenzhou 12, possibly in June.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210515-99-604710 / 4
