China on Thursday unveiled its first independent Mars probe, a vital step in the country’s ambitious area agenda that aims to have an area station until 2022. If successful, the probe, called Tianwen-1, which in Mandarin means “Questions to Heaven,” will be enrolled in a foreign network of explorers on Mars, adding the United States, Europe, Russia, India and soon the United Arab Emirates, who submitted a project to the Red Planet on July 20.
The launch had been planned for years, but it occurs in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which China turns out to have dominated, and the worst floods it has experienced in decades: launch is a show of strength for the foreign community, especially Western powers.
Read also: Security agencies report Chinese fronts in education, energy and telecommunications only
The first Chinese Mars Yinghuo-1 probe introduced in 2011 had failed. Yinghuo-1, presented in November 2011, two years after planned from Kazakhstan on a Russian spacecraft, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2012.
On Thursday, Chinese state media reported that a Long March-5 rocket, the country’s largest launcher, carried the 5-ton spacecraft launching the Wenchang spacecraft off the coast of Hainan Province in southern China at 12:41 p.m.
“About 36 minutes later, the spacecraft, adding an orbiter and rover, was sent into the Earth-Mars motion orbit, embarking on a roughly seven-month adventure on the red planet,” said the China National Space Administration (CNSA). through the official Xinhua news agency.
The project for Mars is called Tianwen-1 after a poem written through Qu Yuan (around 340-278 BC), one of the leading poets of ancient China. “The Chinese country’s call for perseverance to seek facts and science and explore nature and the universe,” the CNSA said.
The Mars rover, which is expected to paint on Mars for at least 90 days on Mars (more than 3 months on Earth), will conduct explorations and patrols on the geomorphic terrain of Mars, Bao Weimin, an educational center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. . Xinhua in June.
“A mars landing is the most complicated and difficult component of the project and the module that the rover carries will slow down in 4 stages,” said Bao, also director of the CNSA Science and Technology Committee. The full contact procedure will take between seven and 8 minutes, Bao said.
Last November, China effectively arranged an experiment that simulated a probe’s flight procedure, avoiding obstacles and descending to land on Mars. In January 2019, China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft landed on the other aspect of the moon, making it the first spacecraft to land on the moon component, which is never visual from Earth. China had welcomed India’s Mars project when it was introduced in 2014.
The good fortune of the mars project is not only india’s pride, but also that of Asia, China said at the time, adding that it is a milestone in the area’s global exploration.
“We congratulate India on the good fortune of accessing satellite orbit”Mars (planet), said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying in 2014.
“This is India’s pride and Asia pride and historic progress in the exploration of humanity. So we congratulate India on that,” Hua added.
“O item.title”