Zhurong, a Chinese-owned cruiser, successfully landed on Mars on Saturday (15/5) morning. The success, the government said, was a victory for Beijing's space ambitions and a historic achievement for a country on its first Mars mission.
Apart from China, the United States to the United Arab Emirates have sent many cruisers to Mars. However, they saw failure to land safely more often than success.
China's Tianwen-1 was successfully launched in July 2020 and entered Mars orbit in February 2021. This is an important milestone for their space program.
Up to Zhurong, a six-wheeled solar powered ship had successfully landed and was on a mission to scan the surface and collect rocks and data. The name Zhurong is taken from the name of the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology.
Apart from Zhurong, several other cruisers had successfully landed on Mars. One of them is NASA's Perseverance in early 2021. Perseverance is the fifth cruiser to land on Mars since 1997.
Perseverance has a mission to hunt for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The cruiser is the size of a small SUV, weighs a metric ton, has 19 cameras and two microphones in hopes of being the first to record sound on Mars.
Furthermore, there is the Arabian Hope which successfully entered Mars orbit in February after being launched in July 2020.
The spacecraft is designed to further study Mars' atmosphere and its climate which changes over time.
In addition, the European Space Agency and the Russian Space Agency ExoMars are collaborating in launching Schiaparelli. Despite the difficulties of his first phase, Schiaparelli crashed to the surface of Mars in October 2016.
This is said to pave the way for a new exploration, Rosalind Franklin, due to launch in 2022.
Some of the other NASA cruisers are Curiosity and Opportunity. Curiosity remained active on the surface of Mars after landing in 2012 and has a mission to study the geology of Mars and the history of its environment.
Meanwhile, Opportunity is the longest Mars explorer who has been there from 2004 to 2018. He and his twin brother, Spirit, confirmed that there was once water on the arid surface of Mars.
The Soviet Union also launched cruisers to Mars between 1960-1971, although several failed to fly. However, two of them, Mars 2 and 3, successfully landed on the Red Planet in November and December 1971.
Mars 2 successfully landed on Mars after successfully orbiting for 18 hours. Whereas Mars 3 managed to land and operate 20 seconds on the surface before falling. The two of them were lost swept away in the great dust storm there.
The two spacecraft sent images, temperature readings and information about Mars' gravity and magnetic field back to the USSR.
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