Tianwen 1 Mars Probe
A five-ton Tianwen-1 Mars probe is the heaviest deep space probe among the Chinese space probe family. The probe was launched via a Long March-5 Y4 carrier rocket from China’s Wenchang pace centre in south China’s Hainan province. The probe entered into planned Earth-Mars transfer orbit after a flight of around 2,000 seconds. Chinese national space administration (CNSA) said that after entering into Mars-Earth orbit, the Probe finally started its journey towards the Red Planet. Mars is one of Earth\’s closest planets in the solar system. It has the most similar environment to that of Earth\’s. Human beings have made 44 Mars mission attempts, and only 24 of them have succeeded as yet.
Moreover, CNSA wants to achieve a plethora of goals from this mission. Including a series of technological advancements, like the Mars orbit insertion. Similarly, they want to achieve long term automatic probe management, long-distance communication and mars surface roving capabilities.
Mission will mark China’s expertise in space technology
Furthermore, Tianwen-1 will travel seven months as it is expected to reach Mars’ gravity field in February 2021. If it is successful in its journey, Tianwen-1 will be the first Mars expedition to complete orbiting, landing, and roving in a single mission in space history. Thus, this mission will mark China’s expertise in space technology and deep space exploration system. Additionally, space science is one of the toughest areas of science. Needing precision, accuracy, consistency, and high budgeting.
Similarly, China is not alone in this project. France and Austria are cooperating in payload scaling and data analysis for the mission. \”The completion of the first practical mission would indicate that the Long March-5 series has officially joined service,\” said Wang Jue, chief commander of the Long March-5 rocket model.
Technical details
Long March-5 has a 5-meter diameter core stage and four 3.35-meter diameter boosters and is 57 meters long with a take-off weight of around 870 tons and thrust of 1,000 tons. Interestingly, it has raised the country\’s Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) launch capability from 5 tons to 14 tons.
Besides that, the Long March-5 Y4 carrier rocket has reached an escape velocity of over 11.2 kilometres per second, managing to send the probe into planned orbit, and according to Li Dong, chief designer of the Long March-5, \”this speed set a new fastest flight speed record for China\’s launch vehicles.\”
