China succeeded in landing its robot jeep on Mars on Saturday, a first for the Asian country. This is reported by the public television channel CCTV.
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The Zhurong – named after a god of fire in Chinese myths – flew to Mars aboard the Tianwen-1 (Heavenly Questions-1) probe. It was launched on July 23 with a Long March-5 launch vehicle. In February, the spacecraft arrived at Mars after a crossing of 475 million kilometers in about 200 days. From orbit around Mars, the Tianwen-1 looked for a suitable place for the Zhurong to land.
China is the third country to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars in a controlled manner, after the Soviet Union and the United States. Landing on Mars is extremely difficult and takes about seven minutes. About half of all Mars missions worldwide have failed.
China wants to use the Zhurong to find traces of life and map the surface and soil of Mars. Moreover, China wants to show the rest of the world what it is capable of and what its ambitions are.
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(Belgian)
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