Second only to the U.S. in a fully successful Mars landing, China is now set to explore the Utopia Planitia region of the Red Planet’s surface.
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Illustration of China’s Tianwen-1 lander and accompanying Zhurong rover on the surface of Mars.
And then there were two: today China says it safely landed a spacecraft on Mars—for the first time in its history and in its first attempt, becoming the only other nation besides the U.S. to achieve such a feat. Its Zhurong rover, named after a god of fire from Chinese folklore, successfully touched down in Utopia Planitia around 7:11 P.M. EST as part of the Tianwen-1 mission, according to the China National Space Administration. Soon the rover should drive down the ramp of its landing platform, ready to explore its unearthly surroundings. If there was any doubt about China’s spacefaring prowess, it has been dispelled now that the nation has added interplanetary landings as a coveted notch on its belt “Mars is hard,” says Roger Launius, NASA’s former chief historian. “This is a really big deal.”
Tianwen-1 was launched in July 2020 as part of a summer Martian armada that also included launches of NASA’s Perseverance rover and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter. All three missions arrived at Mars in February. But while Perseverance descended straight to the surface, Tianwen-1 instead entered an elliptical orbit around the planet to give its scientists a god’s-eye view for scouting out their planned landing site in Utopia Planitia, an immense impact basin on Mars. “China does not have its own detailed Mars maps,” says Brian Harvey, a writer who covers the country’s space program. At least, that was the case until today, when Tianwen-1’s controllers decided they had seen enough to confidently initiate the spacecraft’s daring descent.