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A model of the “Zhurong” rover at a trade fair in China
Photo: Ng Han Guan / AP
China has landed on Mars for the first time.
The landing module of the Chinese spaceship "Tianwen-1" touched down on the surface of the Red Planet on Saturday morning with the rover "Zhurong" on board.
This was announced by the state news agency Xinhua, citing the space agency.
"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.
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Ingenuity's first Mars flight: on the surface
In February, the US space agency Nasa landed its Mars rover “Perseverance” with the ultra-light mini-helicopter “Ingenuity” on the red planet.
“Ingenuity” then completed its first historic flight on Mars in April.
So far, only the USA has managed to use reconnaissance vehicles on the Red Planet.
The Soviet Union managed to land in the 1970s, but contact with the probe was immediately lost.
The flight to the Red Planet and landing are considered extremely difficult.
The landing process that »Zhurong« now had to complete is also referred to as the »seven minutes of horror« because it takes place faster than radio signals from Mars can reach Earth.
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A model of the Mars probe »Tianwen-1«
Photo: Zhang Jiansong / dpa
This means that the team from the Chinese Mars mission was only able to watch the fully automatic landing with a time delay.
Before »Zhurong«, some Mars robots from other countries had already failed due to the difficult landing maneuver.
In 2016, for example, the »Schiaparelli« probe, which Russia and the European space agency ESA had jointly sent to Mars, shattered on impact on the Red Planet.
Information about the planet's surface, geological structure and climate
If everything goes according to plan, the rover "Zhurong", named after the Chinese god of fire, which touched down in the Utopia Planitia region, will 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 has invested billions in the past few years to catch up with the US in space travel, which has been sending spacecraft and astronauts into space for decades.
At the end of April, the People's Republic put the first module of its new space station into orbit.
The station is scheduled to go into operation next year.
In December, China completed an ambitious lunar mission: a capsule with two kilograms of samples from the earth's satellite returned safely to earth.
A manned moon landing is another project that China intends to realize soon.
cop / dpa / AFP
