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Correspondent
BEIJING: China’s Mars probe Tianwen-1 has traveled around 100 million km as of 10:08 a.m. Friday, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The Mars probe is in stable condition and its multiple payloads have finished self-checks. It has traveled in orbit for 36 days and is 10.75 million km away from Earth.
The Mars probe was sent into the Earth-Mars transfer orbit by a Long March-5 rocket on July 23. It is expected to travel 470 million km before arriving on Mars, and will be about 195 million km away from Earth by then, according to a source from the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the CNSA.
So far, the Mars probe has captured an image of Earth and the moon and conducted its first orbital correction. Starting from 10:20 p.m. on Aug. 19, multiple payloads on the Mars probe, including the Mars magnetometer, Mars mineralogy spectrometer and high-resolution camera, have completed self-checks. The scientific data of the payloads were transmitted to the ground smoothly, confirming that they are in normal condition. Multiple flight control tasks were also carried out normally.
The probe will conduct deep-space maneuvers and several orbital corrections, and carry out orbiting, landing and roving missions when it approaches the Mars orbit, according to the CNSA.
