China Mars mission lifts off, aiming to join U.S. in landing on Red Planet
NASA had originally planned to launch its new rover on July 17, but the mission was delayed to July 30, according to the U.S. space agency.
The Chinese launch off the southern island of Hainan was widely watched domestically on state television on Thursday. The mission is named Tianwen-1, which in Chinese means to question the heavens.
Space exploration has taken on symbolic significance in the U.S.-China strategic competition, with both President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping declaring fresh ambitions in the field. Trump ordered late last year the creation of the U.S. Space Force, the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Mars has become a focus for the new space race, due to its potential for human habitation. Previous missions have found water on the planet, a necessity for all of Earth’s life-forms.
“Scientists have long hoped to find another celestial body in the solar system and transform it into a second Earth, which would allow humankind to migrate there in great numbers. At the moment, the only possibility is Mars,” Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China’s lunar project, told Chinese media earlier this week.
Still, a manned mission to Mars by any country remains years in the future.
The Tianwen-1 mission includes an orbiter that will take high-resolution photographs of Mars and other measurements while circling the planet, as well as a rover that will traverse the surface, collecting data on soil and rock composition, Chinese state media reported.
“In the past, we relied on information shared on foreign websites to study Mars,” Chinese National Space Science Center researcher Liu Yang said, according to an official publication. “Once our own Tianwen-1 lands on the Red Planet, we would have access to firsthand exploration data at the earliest time possible for our original research.”
The spacecraft is expected to take between six and seven months to reach Mars, according to state media.
Lyric Li in Beijing contributed to this report.
