Zhurong Lands on the Red Planet

James

James

May 16, 2021 · 1 min read

China has achieved a massive milestone today, successfully landing their Zhurong rover on the vast northern plains of Utopia Planitia on Mars.

Landing on Mars is notoriously unforgiving—historically, about half of all missions sent there have failed. For the Chinese National Space Administration to successfully orbit, descend, and soft-land a rover on their very first independent attempt is a staggering engineering triumph.

We now have two active rovers from two different nations exploring the Martian surface simultaneously, which is brilliant news for global scientific collaboration and our ongoing quest to understand the planet's geological history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhurong_(rover)