(BEIJING) – China presented its ambitious project to Mars on Thursday in an ambitious attempt to register in the United States to effectively land a spacecraft on the Red Planet.
A long March 5 carrier rocket took off clear skies at approximately 12:40 p.m. Hainan Island, southern mainland China. Hundreds of area enthusiasts eagerly shouted on a beach across the bay from the launch site.
Launch commander Zhang Xueyu announced that they applauded in the control room that the rocket was usually flying about forty-five minutes later. “The Mars rover has to enter the programmed orbit,” he said in brief comments broadcast live on the state-owned CCTV.
It’s time for the flight to Mars this week, after an UAE orbiter takes off on a rocket from Japan on Monday. And the United States intends to launch Perseverance, its most complicated rover to date, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next week.
China’s tandem spacecraft, with an orbiter and rover, will take seven months to succeed on Mars, just like the others. If all goes well, Tianwen-1, or “search for heavenly truth,” will search for groundwater, if present, as well as evidence of an ancient life imaginable.
This is not China’s first attempt on Mars. In 2011, a Chinese orbiter accompanying a Russian project was lost when the spacecraft was unable to leave Earth’s orbit after being liberated from Kazakhstan, even though everything was burning in the atmosphere.
This time, China goes alone. He’s also fast, launching an orbiter and a rover in the same spinning project.
China’s secret area program has grown in recent decades. Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut in 2003 and last year Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft of any country to land on the other aspect of the Moon.
Conquering Mars would put China in an elite club.
“There’s a lot to play on,” said Dean Cheng, an expert in Chinese aerospace systems at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult. Only the United States has controlled the landing of a spacecraft on Martian soil, eight times since 1976. NASA’s InSight and Curiosity rovers are still operating today. Six spacecraft are exploring Mars from orbit: 3 Americans, two Europeans and one Indian.
Unlike the other two mars missions presented this month, China has strictly controlled the program data, even withholding any calls from its rover. National security issues have led the United States to restrict cooperation between NASA and China’s program.
In an article previously published this month in Nature Astronomy, chief mission engineer Wan Weixing said Tianwen-1 would go into orbit around Mars in February and look for a landing site on Utopia Planitia, a plain where NASA has detected imaginable evidence of underground ice. Wan died in May of cancer.
Then, an attempt would be taken to land in April or May, according to the article. If all goes well, the sun travels the length of a 240 kilogram (530 lb) golf cart for about 3 months and the orbiter for two years.
Although small compared to the perseverance of 1,025 kilograms (2,260 pounds) of the length of an American car, it is almost twice as large as the two rovers China sent to the moon in 2013 and 2019. Perseverance lasts at least two years. Training
This Mars launch season, which takes place every 26 months when Earth and Mars are closer, is very busy.
The Amal spacecraft, or Hope, which will be in orbit around Mars still landing, is the first interplanetary project in the Arab world. NASA’s Perseverance rover is as follows.
“At no other time in our history have we noticed anything that’s happening with those 3 exclusive missions to Mars. Each is a marvel of science and engineering,” Space Foundation executive director Thomas Zelibor said at an online roundtable. Week.
China’s direction to Mars hit some punches: a Long Mars-5 rocket, nicknamed “Fat 5” due to its bulky shape, may be unveiled this year. The coronavirus pandemic has forced scientists to paint from home. In March, when the tools were to be transported from Beijing to Shanghai, 3 team members drove 12 hours to deliver them.
As China joins the United States, Russia, and Europe in creating a global satellite navigation system, experts say it is trying to outperform the United States in exploring the area.
Instead, Cheng, of the Heritage Foundation, said China in a “slow race” with Japan and India to identify itself as the power of the Asia area.
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Ghosal reported from New Delhi. Follow him and McNeil on Twitter: aniruddhg1 and @stmcneil