BEIJING (AP) – China says its Tianwen-1 spacecraft has entered a temporary parking orbit around Mars in anticipation of a rover landing on the red planet in the coming months.
The China National Space Administration said the spacecraft performed a maneuver to adjust its orbit on Wednesday morning in Beijing, and will remain in new orbit for about the next three months before attempting to land. During that time, it will map the surface of Mars and use its cameras and other sensors to gather more data, particularly about its future landing site.
That follows the landing of the American Perseverance rover last Thursday near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater to look for signs of ancient microscopic life.
A successful bid to land Tianwen-1 would make China only the second country after the US to place a spacecraft on Mars. China’s solar-powered vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, will collect data on underground water and search for evidence that the planet once experienced microscopic life.
Tianwen, the title of an old poem, means ‘Quest for Heavenly Truth’.
Landing a spacecraft on Mars is notoriously tricky. About a dozen orbiters missed the target. In 2011, a Mars-bound Chinese orbiter that was part of a Russian mission failed to leave Earth.
China’s attempt includes a parachute, missile fire and airbags. The proposed landing site is a vast, rock-strewn plain called Utopia Planitia, where the American Viking 2 lander landed in 1976.
The arrival of Tianwen-1 on Mars on February 10 was preceded by that of an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates. All three of the latest missions launched in July to take advantage of the close alignment between Earth and Mars that occurs only once every two years.
Tianwen-1 represents the most ambitious mission yet for China’s secret military-linked space program that first launched an astronaut into orbit in 2003 and returned moon rocks to Earth last year for the first time since the 1970s . China was also the first country to land a spacecraft on the little-explored far side of the moon in 2019.
China is also building a permanent space station and planning a manned lunar mission and a possible permanent moon research base, although no dates have yet been proposed.
On Monday, a massive Long March-5B Y2 rocket was put in place at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province for assembly and testing before launching the space station’s core module called Tianhe. The launch is scheduled for the first half of this year, the first of 11 missions scheduled for construction of the station over the next two years.
China is not participating in the International Space Station, partly at the insistence of the United States.
The space program is a source of enormous national pride in China and Tianwen-1 has attracted a particularly strong following from the public. Tourists flocked to the tropical island of Hainan to watch the launch, while others visit mock marching colonies in desert sites with white domes, airlocks and space suits.