China's first Mars Mission: Tianwen-1 spacecraft enters red planet's orbit

Beijing : China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Wednesday announced that its Tianwen-1 spacecraft has successfully entered the orbit of the red planet after braking system was activated to enable it to be captured by the gravity of the planet.

The braking system on a 3000 newton orbital engine was activated at 07:52 (Beijing time), it was kept active for about 15 minutes to settle the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit of Mars.

With this Tianwen-1 has become China's first artificial satellite of Mars. This is the first phase of three-phase mission (orbiting, landing and roving).

The agency has affirmed that everything on the spacecraft is in good condition and now they will start to analyze the planet to choose an optimum landing location.

China’s spacecraft is likely to attempt soft landing on Mars around May and June.

Tianwen-1 was officially launched to space on July 23 last year. It has flown for 202 days and covered about 475 million kilometers on its journey to Mars.

With such a long distance from Earth, the total delay in communication is of about 10.7 minutes.

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