China may attempt ambitious Mars rover landing on Friday
The Tianwen-1 mission aimed to land, orbit and rove Mars on its first try, a feat no nation had achieved on a debut attempt.
China's Tianwen-1 mission was scheduled to attempt its landing on Mars as early as Friday, May 14, 2021, at 7:11 p.m. EDT, according to Space.com. The mission combined an orbiter, a lander and a rover in a single attempt — a trifecta no other nation had accomplished on its first bid to reach the planet.
The rover, later named Zhurong, was set to touch down in Utopia Planitia, a large plain in Mars's northern hemisphere, per the retrieved reporting. Only the Soviet Union and the United States had previously landed and operated spacecraft on the Martian surface.
Tianwen-1 had been orbiting Mars since February 2021, surveying candidate landing sites before committing to the descent, according to Space.com's coverage.
Why the attempt was called "ambitious"
Landing three distinct spacecraft elements — orbiter, lander and rover — successfully on a first attempt at Mars had not been done by any nation, per the retrieved coverage, which is why the mission was characterized as China's most ambitious space undertaking to date. The mission followed the same broad launch window in July 2020 that also sent NASA's Perseverance rover and the United Arab Emirates' Hope orbiter toward Mars, a scheduling fact noted in the source reporting rather than a claim about relative mission difficulty.
What was still uncertain heading into the attempt
The retrieved reporting characterizes the landing sequence as high-risk, consistent with the historical difficulty of Mars landings generally, but does not itself detail the specific descent stages (entry, parachute deployment, powered descent) for Tianwen-1. Success was not guaranteed at the time of this coverage.
What the mission would signal
A successful landing would make China only the second nation to operate a rover on Mars, following the United States, and the retrieved coverage frames it as a marker of China's broader ambitions in space exploration.
The attempt succeeded
Zhurong touched down successfully in the southern part of Utopia Planitia just after 7 p.m. Eastern time on May 14, 2021, following roughly nine minutes of atmospheric entry, according to later reporting from SpaceNews and Space.com. The landing platform then extended a ramp, allowing Zhurong to roll gently onto the Martian surface -- a deployment method similar to the one used for China's Chang'e lunar rovers, according to the Planetary Society's account of the mission. The rover itself did not drive off the platform until roughly a week after touchdown, per the same source.
The success made China only the third nation, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to achieve a soft landing and surface operations on Mars, and the first to do so -- landing an orbiter, lander and rover together -- on its very first attempt, according to Space.com's coverage of the confirmed landing.
What came after touchdown
Zhurong did not drive off its landing platform immediately -- the rover rolled down the platform's ramp onto the Martian surface on May 22, 2021, at 10:40 a.m. Beijing time, about a week after touchdown, according to reporting retrieved on the rover's early surface operations. The China National Space Administration released Zhurong's first images less than a week after landing: one color photo and one black-and-white photo showing the barren Utopia Planitia terrain, along with a widely circulated "selfie"-style image showing a Chinese national flag unfurled from the side of the lander platform roughly 20 feet from the rover.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Space.com, SpaceNews and the Planetary Society. It restores a story originally published on this site in May 2021; figures are as reported at the time.