China lands rover on Mars in ‘milestone’ achievement

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/15/china-mars-rover/

Source: By Antonia Noori Farzan, The Washington Post. 

Excerpt: China successfully landed a rover-carrying spacecraft on Mars for the first time, state-run media reported Saturday, marking another major victory for the country’s ambitious space program.... China now joins the United States as the only other nations to have successfully landed and operated rovers on Mars, and Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed a “milestone” achievement. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft, launched from the Chinese province of Hainan in July, has been orbiting Mars since February while looking for potential landing sites. Early Saturday, it released an entry capsule containing a lander and a rover that began to plummet through the Mars atmosphere, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency. The entry capsule safely touched down in a flat plane on Mars’ surface at 7:18 a.m. Beijing time (7:18 p.m. Friday Eastern time), though it took about an hour for ground controllers to determine that the mission had been a success, state media reported....  See also New York Times article [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/science/china-mars.html]

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