Mars probe continues its space journey

Tianwen 1 is currently 63.8 million km from Earth as it heads for the red planet

China’s Tianwen 1 Mars probe had traveled 300 million kilometers as of Tuesday morning, according to the China National Space Administration.

The administration said in a statement that the spacecraft was in good condition. By Tuesday morning, the robotic probe had flown for 116 days in an Earth-Mars transfer trajectory toward the red planet and is currently around 63.8 million km from Earth, it noted.

Tianwen 1, the country’s first independent Mars probe, was launched by a Long March 5 heavylift carrier rocket on July 23 at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, opening the nation’s planetary exploration program.

If everything goes according to schedule, the 5-metric ton probe, which consists of two major parts — the orbiter and the landing capsule — will travel more than 470 million km before being captured by the Martian gravitational field in February, when it will be 193 million km from Earth.

Depending on the two planets’ orbital patterns, Mars’ distance from Earth fluctuates between 55 million km and 400 million km.

The mission’s ultimate goal is to soft-land a rover in May 2021 on the southern part of Mars’ Utopia Planitia — a large plain within Utopia, the largest recognized impact basin in the solar system — to make scientific surveys.

If Tianwen 1 can fulfill all of its three objectives — orbiting Mars for comprehensive observation, landing on the planet’s surface and deploying a rover to conduct scientific operations — “it will become the world’s first Mars expedition accomplishing all three goals with one probe,” said Ye Peijian, a leading scientist in deep-space exploration at the China Academy of Space Technology.

So far, the spacecraft has fulfilled three midcourse corrections and a deep-space orbital maneuver, according to the administration.

Meaning “quest f or heavenly truth” in Chinese, Tianwen is a long poem by famous ancient poet Qu Yuan of the Kingdom of Chu during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). He is known for his patriotism and contributions to classical poetry and verse, especially through the poems of the Chu Ci anthology, also known as Songs of Chu.

Before Tianwen 1, there had been 45 Mars exploration missions conducted since October 1960, when the former Soviet Union launched the world’s first Marsbound spacecraft. Only 17 such missions since then have been successful.

For the second step in China’s Mars exploration program, a larger probe will set off for Mars around 2030 to take samples and then return to Earth, space officials have said.

China also has a long-term goal of sending humans to Mars, the country’s space authorities announced last year.