Improved exit-entry services for elderly

SENIOR residents in Shanghai, Chinese and foreigners alike, will enjoy more convenient exit-entry services in future, city police said yesterday.

Among other benefits, they will be served at special windows with staff standing by to help.

They won’t have to make appointments online, and can call 021-28951900.

Elderly people who don’t use smartphones won’t be required to show digital health codes, and instead show their ID documents at the entrance and register their addresses with their temperatures taken, police said.

The service centers will have reading glasses, umbrellas, wheelchairs and first-aid kits if needed.

China’s National Immigration Administration ordered the nationwide improvement of exit-entry services for the elderly population on Tuesday to bridge the “digital divide” with younger people.

The new measures will be provided from April 1 across the country.

Residents above 60 years old are entitled to the benefits, Shanghai’s exit-entry administration said.

CHINA’S Tianwen-1 spacecraft has entered a temporary parking orbit around Mars in anticipation of landing a rover on the red planet in the coming months.

At 6:29am yesterday, Tianwen-1 entered the parking orbit, with its closest point to the planet at 280km and the farthest point at 59,000km. It will take Tianwen-1 about two Martian days to complete a circle (a Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth), the China National Space Administration said.

Tianwen-1, including an orbiter, a lander and a rover, will run in the orbit for about three months.

The CNSA added that payloads on the orbiter will all be switched on for scientific exploration. The medium-resolution camera, high-resolution camera and spectrometer will carry out a detailed investigation on the topography and dusty weather of the pre-selected landing area in preparation for a landing.

This follows the landing of the US Perseverance rover last Thursday near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater to search for signs of ancient microscopic life.

A successful bid to land Tianwen-1 would make China only the second country after the US to place a spacecraft on Mars.

China’s solar-powered vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, will collect data on underground water and look for evidence that the planet may have once harbored microscopic life.

Tianwen, the title of an ancient poem, means “Quest for Heavenly Truth.”

Landing a spacecraft on Mars is notoriously tricky. China’s attempt will involve a parachute, rocket firings and airbags. Its proposed landing site is a vast, rock-strewn plain called Utopia Planitia, where the US Viking 2 lander touched down in 1976.

Tianwen-1’s arrival at Mars on February 10 was preceded by that of an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates. All three of the latest missions were launched in July to take advantage of the close alignment between Earth and Mars that happens only once every two years.

Tianwen-1 represents the most ambitious mission yet for China’s space program that first put an astronaut in orbit around Earth in 2003 and last year brought moon rocks back to Earth for the first time since the 1970s.