China marks probe’s status in Mars trip

BEIJING — China’s Mars probe Tianwen-1, which blasted into space in July, is more than 9 million miles from Earth en route to the red planet, the National Space Administration said Saturday.

The administration said that Tianwen-1 was in stable condition, having completed its first midcourse orbital correction early last month. It will be about 118 million miles from Earth when it arrives at Mars around February, having traveled 292 million miles in all to get there.

The administration has yet to release information about a mysterious reusable experimental spacecraft that returned to Earth a week ago after a two-day flight.

The probe consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, and it marks China’s most ambitious Mars mission yet as it seeks to join the United States in landing a spacecraft on the planet.

It was blasted into space aboard a Long March-5 on July 23 during a month when the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. also took advantage of a shortened distance between the planets to launch similar missions.

China said the reusable spacecraft returned to its designated landing site Sept. 6, calling the flight a breakthrough that will provide convenient round-trip transport to space at a low cost. No other details on the mission or the configuration of the spacecraft have been released.

That is seen as an attempt to put China on the leading edge of space flight. The U.S. has been operating for years the X-37B space plane, which remains in orbit for months.

China’s military-backed space program has developed rapidly since it became just the third country after Russia and the U.S. to put a man in space in 2003.

Last year, China’s Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft from any country to land on the far side of the moon.