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China’s Tianwen 1 robotic probe entered orbit over the polar regions of Mars on Monday, approaching the Red Planet, China’s National Space Administration said.
The spacecraft activated its 3,000 Newton thrust orbital control engine at 5 p.m. to perform an orbital plane change maneuver to enter polar orbit with a perigee of about 265 kilometers above the Red Planet, said administration in a brief press release.
Then, the probe will perform several orbital adjustment operations to get into parking orbit.
In parking orbit, it will make observations and investigations at the predefined landing site.
Prior to the last maneuver, Tianwen 1 was traveling around an elliptical Martian orbit with a perigee of around 400 km after arriving in the gravitational field of Mars on Wednesday evening, becoming the first Chinese spacecraft to reach the planet.
Tianwen 1, the country’s first independent Mars mission, was launched by a Long 5 March heavy carrier rocket on July 23, 2020 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province, launching the country’s planetary exploration program .
The 5-metric-ton probe, which consists of two main parts – the orbiter and the landing capsule – flew 202 days and approximately 475 million km on its journey to Mars. Its average flight speed was around 100,000 km / h.
During its journey, the spacecraft performed four mid-course corrections and an orbital maneuver in deep space to ensure it was still pointed precisely at Mars.
The ultimate goal of the Tianwen 1 mission is to land a rover in May or June on the southern part of the Utopia Planitia de Mars – a large plain of Utopia, the largest recognized impact basin in the solar system – to conduct scientific studies.
Tianwen 1 has been the world’s 46th Mars exploration mission since October 1960, when the former Soviet Union launched the first spacecraft to Mars. Only 18 of these missions were successful.
This article originally appeared on China Daily and has been reprinted with permission.
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