It is estimated that Mars rovers and explorers will take about three months to take photos.
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Shanghai, China:
China’s Mars rover left its landing pad and began exploring the surface on Saturday, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said, making it the second country to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet.
The launch of the Mars Tianwen-1 probe last July, carrying the Zhurong rover, marked an important milestone in China’s space program.
Tianwen-1 landed on a vast northern lava plain known as Utopia Planitia a week ago and returned its first surface photos a few days later.
It is estimated that Mars rovers and explorers will spend about three months taking photos, gathering geographic data, and collecting and analyzing rock samples.
Zhurong six solar -powered wheels weighing 240 kilograms (530 lb) is named after the mythical Chinese fire god.
China has now sent astronauts into space, powered probes to the moon, and landed rovers on Mars – the top prize in the competition for space domination.
The United States and Russia are the only other countries to ever reach Mars, and only Russia operates surface rovers.
Several US, Russian and European attempts to land the rover on Mars have failed in the past, most recently in 2016 with the crash landing of the Russian-European Schiaparelli spacecraft.
The latest successful arrival comes in February, when US space agency NASA landed the Perseverance rover, which roams off the planet.
American explorers launch small robotic helicopters on Mars, the first powered flight ever conducted on any other planet.
China has come a long way in a race to catch up with the United States and Russia, whose astronauts and cosmonauts have decades of experience in space exploration.
It successfully launched the first module from its new space station last month in hopes of being manned by 2022 and possibly sending humans to the moon.
Last week, a segment of China’s Long March 5B rocket crashed over the Indian Ocean during an uncontrolled landing on Earth.
It has drawn criticism from the United States and other countries for violating etiquette governing the return of space debris to Earth, with officials saying the remains could potentially endanger human life and property.
(This story is not edited by NDTV staff and is generated automatically from syndicated feeds.)
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