Almost seven months after launching from the surface of the Earth, the Chinese interplanetary station “Tianwen-1”, consisting of an orbiter (satellite) and a descent vehicle with a payload in the form of a rover, successfully entered orbit around Mars, the Chinese news agency “Xinhua” reports with reference to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
According to the information, approximately 15 minutes after the start of the engines, the spacecraft, including the orbiter, lander and rover, slowed down enough to be captured by the gravity of Mars, and entered an elliptical orbit around the red planet with the closest distance from the surface of Mars about 400 km. To complete one circle, “Tianwen-1” will take about 10 Earth days.
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The device was launched by China’s largest launch vehicle, Changzheng-5, on July 22, 2020. from the Wenchang Cosmodrome on the northeast coast of Hainan Island in southern China.
Tianwen 1 has been in space for over 200 days. It performed four-orbit corrections and a deep-space maneuver. It flew 475 million kilometers and was 192 million kilometers from Earth when it reached Mars orbit. One-way communication latency is about 10.7 minutes.
The craft will now make several orbital corrections, exploring potential landing sites in preparation for landing in May or June 2021. According to the mission program, in a few months, the Lander-bike hybrid will separate from the probe and descend from the sky onto a plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars called Utopia Planitia.
The successful entry of Tianwen 1 into orbit makes China the sixth space country to successfully send a probe to the Red Planet after the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, India and the United Arab Emirates.