The unmanned Mars probe in China, Tianwen-1, will explode on the Long March 5 rocket in Hainan, on July 23, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
The Tianwen 1 robotic Mars probe had traveled more than 400 million kilometers by Sunday morning and is expected to enter Mars orbit next month, according to China’s National Space Administration.
By 6 a.m. Sunday, the spacecraft had flown for 163 days on the Earth-Mars orbit and was about 8.3 million km from the red planet, the administration said in a statement, adding that it was in good condition .
In February, the probe is expected to deceive as it approaches Mars and then begin orbiting the planet in preparation for landing work, according to the report .
Tianwen 1, the first independent Mars mission in China, was launched by a heavy-duty rocket launcher on March 5 on July 23 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province in South China, opening a program study the planet of the country.
If all goes according to plan, the 5-meter tonne probe – consisting of two main parts, an orbiter and a landing capsule – will travel more than 470 million km before being captured by Martian gravity field in February, when it is 193 million km from Earth.
According to the orbit of the two planets, Mars is from 55 million km to 400 million km away from Earth.
The ultimate goal of the mission is to launch a rover in May on the south side of Mars’ Utopia Planitia – a large area within Utopia, the largest known impact basin in the solar system – to conduct scientific studies.
If Tianwen 1 can achieve its three goals – traveling around Mars for a complete observation, coming to the surface of the planet and using a rover to carry out scientific activity – “this is Mars’ first time on the world to achieve all three goals with one probe, “said Ye Peijian, a leading in – depth space study scientist at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology.
Tianwen 1 is the 46th Mars exploration mission in the world since October 1960, when the former Soviet Union launched the world’s first spacecraft with Mars. Only 17 of these missions were successful.