China successfully lands rover on Mars

[Tender Branson]

2nd nation after the USA.

China has successfully landed a spacecraft on Mars, state media announced early on Saturday.

The six-wheeled Zhurong robot was targeting Utopia Planitia, a vast terrain in the planet's northern hemisphere.

The vehicle used a combination of a protective capsule, a parachute and a rocket platform to make the descent.

The successful touchdown is a remarkable achievement, given the difficult nature of the task.

Only the Americans have really mastered landing on Mars until now. With this landing, China becomes the second country to put a rover on Mars.

Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated the team's "outstanding achievement" in a special message.

"You were brave enough for the challenge, pursued excellence and placed our country in the advanced ranks of planetary exploration," he said.

The probe officially landed at 07:18 on Saturday, Beijing time (Friday 23:18 GMT), according to state media.

It took 17 minutes to unfold its solar panels and send a signal back to Earth.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57122914

[Tender Branson]

Like the NASA rover before, the Chinese rover also has Austrian camera equipment on board.

https://twitter.com/MarsZhurong/status/1393365304433156100

[vitoNova]

Nice.

Globalism is the future.  

And eventually human colonization of the cosmos.  

[Fight for Trump]

Greatest country in the world.

[CumbrianLefty]

Nice.

Globalism is the future.  

And eventually human colonization of the cosmos.  

Well "eventually" the sun will become a red giant and consume our planet.

So getting on with it before that happens would be nice.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Arguably 3rd nation to land on Mars rather than 2nd. The Soviet Union pulled off a soft touchdown way back in 1971, but the lander failed after a minute on the surface (so whether it "counts" or not is debated).

[Conservatopia]

Next step is (re-)educating all those Martians!

[PSOL]

Hopefully more nations are to follow soon.

[dead0man]

Well at least they cared where it landed this time.

[jaichind]

Note that Zhurong or 祝融 is the Chinese god of Fire that was especially worshiped by the people of the Chu kingdom (Hubei and Hunan). The PRC moon mission that brought back a bunch of moon rocks in late 2020 is called Chang'e or 嫦娥 which is the Chinese goddess of the Moon.  There are archeological and literary evidence of these two deities being worshiped at least 2500 years ago.  Names means things.  The trend of naming things based on classical Chinese culture started in the early 2000s and last decade clearly have accelerated.  The current PRC regime clearly has abandoned its iconoclastic ideology of the 1960s and 1970s and have restructured itself as a guardian of classical Chinese civilization and successor regime of the dynasties of old.