The China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Thursday successfully launched its first mission aimed at landing on the planet Mars. Not only that, but the mission, named Tianwen-1, will deploy a rover on the surface of the Red Planet. (Tianwen means ‘Questions to Heaven’.)

The probe was carried aloft on a Long March 5 rocket from China’s Wenchang launch complex on Hainan Island. The mission comprises an orbiter as well as the rover-carrying lander. 

Tianwen-1 should enter Martian orbit in February, but the lander would not attempt to touch down until two or three months later. This approach would copy that of the Americans with their Viking Mars landers in the 1970s. The delay would allow the mission controllers to evaluate Martian atmospheric conditions before authorising the landing attempt.

Mars is an infamously difficult world for spacecraft. Half of all missions to the Red Planet have failed. Only the Americans have successfully put probes and rovers on Mars and operated them for extended periods. The Soviet Union’s Mars-3 and the UK’s Beagle-2 (part of the European Space Agency’s otherwise successful Mars Express mission) both made it to the Martian surface but both failed shortly thereafter.

China, however, has built up experience with landers and rovers on the Moon with its two Chang’e/Yutu lunar lander/rover missions (Chang’e-3 and -4 being the landers and Yutu-1 and -2 being the rovers). Although the Moon has no atmosphere, this experience has given the CNSA the confidence that Tianwen will be able to cope with entry into the Martian atmosphere and landing.

The lander will enter the Martian atmosphere in a capsule and then use a parachute and retrorockets to decelerate and touchdown. Its landing zone is in the Utopia Planitia region. The lander appears to be just a transport vessel, intended to get the rover safely on to the planet and let it deploy. 

The rover is equipped with a camera on a tall mast plus five other instruments to study local mineralogy and search for water ice (there are also other forms of ice on Mars). Chinese scientists hope that it will operate for at least 90 Martian days. (A Martian day is called a Sol and lasts for 24 hours and 39 minutes.) Meanwhile the orbiter, which carries seven instruments, will be remotely sensing Mars from space.