China’s Tianwen-1 probe has returned its first image of Mars, the national space agency said, as the mission prepares to land on the Red Planet later this year.
The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a rival US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around February 10.
The black and white photo released late Friday by the China National Space Administration showed geological features, including the Schiaparelli crater and the Valles Marineris, a sprawling stretch of canyons on the surface of Mars.
The photo was taken about 2.2 million kilometers from Mars, according to CNSA, which said the spacecraft was now 1.1 million kilometers from the planet.
The robotic plane fired one of its engines on Friday to “perform an orbital correction” and was expected to slow down before being “caught by the gravity of Mars around February 10,” the agency said.
(China National Space Administration)
The five-ton Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s bottom.
China hopes to eventually land the rover in Utopia, a massive impact basin on Mars, in May.
After seeing the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China put billions of dollars into its military-led space program.
It has made tremendous progress over the past decade, sending a human into space in 2003.
The Asian superpower has laid the foundation for building a space station by 2022 and gaining a permanent foothold in orbit.
But Mars has proven to be a challenging target so far, with most of the missions sent to the planet by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and India since 1960, failing.
Tianwen-1 is not China’s first attempt to reach Mars.
A previous mission with Russia in 2011 ended prematurely because the launch failed.
China has already sent two rovers to the moon. With the second, China became the first country to make a successful soft landing across the street.
All systems on the Tianwen-1 probe are in “working order,” CNSA said Friday.
© Agence France-Presse