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Showing posts with label China's first Mars probe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China's first Mars probe. Show all posts

Thursday, July 23, 2020

China successfully launches 1st Mars probe

Live: China's inaugurates first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1 in southern Hainan Province

https://youtu.be/V9BsqPqqQbg

Mission marks nation's official start of interplanetary probe era


https://youtu.be/U9OTyGXJMic


China's Long March-5 Y4 carrier rocket, carrying the Mars probe, blasted off at 12:41 p.m., July 23, 2020, from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province.

2020 can be regarded as the year of Mars. Following Sunday's launch of the UAE's Mars probe, China inaugurates its first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1 in Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern Hainan Province. After the launch via a Long March-5 carrier rocket, the Mars probe will conduct a series of tasks and explorations on the red planet.

Hailed as Earth's sister planet, Mars has become the priority planet in deep space exploration. Can Mars be turned into a second habitat for humans? What will our lives be like if we settle on Mars in the future? Join CGTN to get a closer look at Mars and explore the beauty of the mysterious planet.


Photo: Guo Wenbin/Our Space
Photo: Guo Wenbin/Our Space
 
China successfully launched its first Mars probe, named Tianwen-1, via a Long March-5 Y4 carrier rocket from Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China's Hainan Province into planned orbit on Thursday. The move heralds a new era in China's deep-space exploration, which has steadily progressed beyond moon probes to interplanetary missions, mission commanders and developers said.

After a flight of around 2,000 seconds, the probe entered the planned Earth-Mars transfer orbit, officially embarking on its journey to the Red Planet, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA)on Thursday.

China's Tianwen-1 Mars probe is expected to reach Mars' gravity field in February 2021, about seven months after the launch. If it succeeds, Tianwen-1 will be the first Mars expedition to complete orbiting, landing and roving in a single mission in humanity's history.

According to the CNSA, the project is set to achieve a series of technological advances, including Mars orbit insertion, long-term automatic probe management, long distance communication and Mars surface roving capabilities.

The interplanetary mission will also mark China's establishment of a complete deep-space exploration project system, covering design, production, flight mission and scientific research.

The mission also involves international cooperation, as the European Space Agency and Argentina will participate by taking part in spacecraft monitoring and controlling, the Global Times has learned from the CNSA.

Moreover, China is also working with countries including France and Austria on payload scaling and data analysis for the mission.

Infographic: Global Times

The Thursday launch mission was the fifth flight of the Long March-5 carrier rocket series, the strongest member of China's launch vehicle family. The last launch mission of the Long March-5B, a smaller variant of the Long March 5, took place on May 5, also from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan.

The Thursday launch also marked the first time the Long March-5 was put to practical mission use, the rocket developer China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) under the state-owned space giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) told the Global Times on Thursday.

"The completion of the first practical mission would indicate that the Long March-5 series has officially joined service," Wang Jue, chief commander of the Long March-5 rocket model, told the Global Times.

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. It has raised the country's Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) launch capability from 5 tons to 14 tons.

The Long March-5 Y4 carrier rocket has reached an escape velocity of over 11.2 kilometers 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."

The Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which weighs about five tons, is also the heaviest deep space probe that China has ever sent into space, and is one ton heavier than the Chang'e-4 lunar probe, which China successfully sent to the dark side of the moon in January 2019, the CALT noted.

The powerful launch capability of the Long March-5 rocket has advanced the country's deep-space exploration to a new starting point in interplanetary expeditions, and a new era of planet probes beyond the moon has officially been ushered in as the first Mars probe begins, Li Minghua, CALT's Party chief, announced upon the successful launch on Thursday.

The Long March-5 carrier rocket is expected to launch another Chang'e-5, weighing about eight tons, which aims to undertake the country's first moon sample return mission, set to take place before the end of this year. The Long March-5B will launch the core module of the country's first space station around March 2021, Lou Luliang, the rocket series vice chief designer, revealed to the Global Times.



Infographic: Global Times

Challenges ahead


Mars, one of Earth's closest neighbor planets in the solar system, has the most similar environment to Earth's. Human beings have made 44 Mars mission attempts, and only 24 of them succeeded.

The minimum distance between Mars and Earth is about 55 million kilometers, and the two planets only come that close every 26 months. The Mars exploration window is open between July and August.

No country other than China has ever set the goals of orbiting, landing and roving the Red Planet in its first mission attempt, and the successful launch will only mark the beginning of a long expedition full of challenges, and uncertainties also remain, observers noted.

According to the CASC on Tuesday, only a handful of Mars missions have been able to land on the planet and conduct roving explorations.

China's Mars orbiter will carry seven scientific payloads, while the rover will have six, according to the CASC. Safely landing the Mars rover after the probe enters the planet's orbit, which will take around seven minutes, will be one of the most decisive stages of the whole mission. During those seven minutes, the probe needs to slow down from more than 20,000 kilometers per hour to zero, which poses a grave challenge to its surface heat-resistance capability.

To overcome that, CALT has developed a new material structure, which is more advanced than that for the US Apollo flight, to ensure the safety of the probe in the deceleration process.

Besides China, the US and the UAE are also launching their Mars missions this summer.

The first Arab space mission to Mars, an unmanned probe dubbed Hope, blasted off from Japan on Monday, in a bid to reveal more about the atmosphere of the Red Planet.

NASA moved its first launch attempt of its Mars 2020 mission to no earlier than July 30, according to the US space agency's official website.

ExoMars, a cooperation program between Europe and Russia, earlier announced that it will be delayed to 2022.

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Friday, July 17, 2020

Long March-5 rocket in position for China's first Mars probe

Infographic: GT


Photo: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation

China has taken another major step toward its first Mars probe mission, Tianwen-1. The Long March-5 Y4, the carrier rocket commissioned for the probe, was vertically transported to the launch area at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China's Hainan Province on Friday morning ahead of the launch scheduled to take place between the end of July and the beginning of August, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA.)

According to a CNSA press release the Global Times attained on Friday, the Long March-5 Y4 rocket arrived at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in late May this year, and has completed preparation work including assembly and pre-launch tests.

On Friday Morning, the carrier rocket was transferred to the launch area after a smooth roll-out from the assembly building, which took around two hours, the CNSA said.

Propellant will be injected into the rocket after further functional checks and final inspections. And then the rocket will be launched according to schedule.

The minimum distance between Mars and Earth is about 55 million kilometers, and the two planets only come that close every 26 months, state-owned space giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the mission's contractor, told the Global Times in June. The Mars exploration window is open between July and August.

The final launch date of China's Mars probe mission will be determined by environmental factors including weather conditions, the distance between Earth to Mars and the launch center's overall condition, as well as a small but more decisive factor, the technical readiness inspection before launch, Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of the Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Friday.

There must be no rainfall, with a ground wind speed of below 8 meters per second and horizontal visibility above 20 kilometers, Beijing-based space expert Pang Zhihao told the Global Times.

Moreover, from eight hours before launch until one hour after launch, 30 to 40 kilometers of surrounding areas should have no thunder activity, and wind speeds should be weaker than 70 meters per second in skies 3 to 18 kilometers above the launch area, Pang said, noting that winds at 8 to 15 kilometers above ground would affect the rocket's flight form.

A wind speed difference in the lower and upper air could twist the rocket's body, leading to failure, he said.

The UAE's mission to Mars has been rescheduled for launch between July 20 and 22, the UAE government announced on Thursday.

The launch of Japan's Hope probe was postponed twice this week due to unstable weather at its launch site on Japan's Tanegashima island.

"Weather conditions in Hainan are in general better than those in Japan. That was one of the factors China took into consideration when deciding to construct the launch center in the southern island of Hainan," Wang said.

The mission will mark the first application launch of the Long March-5, currently the strongest member of the Chinese carrier rocket family. It will be China's first rocket launch into the Earth-Mars transfer orbit.

The Tianwen-1 Mars probe mission was approved by Chinese authorities on January 2016, and aims to achieve orbiting, landing and roving on the Red Planet in a single mission.

The upcoming launch will be the fourth flight of the Long March-5, following the successful comeback of the state-of-the-art rocket at the end of 2019, more than two

years after a July 2017 launch failure on the rocket's second test flight due to engine problems. Earlier on Tuesday, media reported that spacecraft developer, the China Academy of Space Technology, had revealed the Mars probe which had arrived at the Wenchang Space Launch Center.

Space experts expressed confidence in the success of China's Mars mission as the country has amassed rich experience from previous lunar probe missions, with the Chang'e-4 landing on the far side of the moon being the major highlight.

"The relay communication technology applied in the Chang'e-4 mission will be particularly valuable for the Mars mission, overcoming the distance challenge for interplanetary spacecraft communication," Wang said.

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Update:

Rocket to lift Mars probe moved to launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern island province of Hainan



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