On this day five years ago, China became the third country in the world to safely land a rover on Mars after months of space travel

This article was first published on May 16, 2021

After seven months of space travel, three months in orbit and “nine minutes of ter­ror”, China has become the third coun­try in the world to safely land a rover on Mars.

The China National Space Admin­is­tra­tion (CNSA) said its rover Zhu Rong – named after the Chinese god of fire and war – suc­cess­fully landed on Mars yes­ter­day after “nine minutes of ter­ror”, refer­ring to Nasa’s descrip­tion of the period of des­cent, when engin­eers on Earth have no con­trol or over­sight of the rover because of the radio sig­nal delay.

“The sci­entific research team con­firmed via the tele­metry sig­nal sent by the Zhu Rong Mars rover that on May 15, the Tian­wen-1 Lander suc­cess­fully landed in the preselec­ted land­ing area in the Uto­pia Plain of south­ern Mars,” CNSA said.

Pres­id­ent Xi Jin­ping said in a writ­ten con­grat­u­lat­ory mes­sage that the mis­sion was an import­ant step in China’s space explor­a­tion.

Sci­ent­ists should con­tinue their explor­a­tion of Mars and accel­er­ate China’s devel­op­ment as a space power.

Source: News - South China Morning Post