Before China, only the United States made a successful soft landing on Mars, writes Ars Technica, ignoring the Soviet Mars-3 mission.
“China has become only the second country to make a soft landing on the Red Planet, which can be called a huge success,” the American publication assures.
Ars Technica notes that the size and mass of the Zhurong rover of the Tianwen-1 mission is comparable to the American Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived on Mars in 2004.
The publication, in the material that came out before the announcement of the success of Tianwen-1, writes that “no country except the United States has successfully landed a spacecraft on Mars and deployed a rover. “Other countries have tried and failed several times,” writes Ars Technica.
Spaceflight Now talks about the success of the PRC more objectively, recalling that before China, “only two countries have previously achieved a soft landing on the Red Planet.” The publication of the American publication claims that the Soviet Mars-3 lander “was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the surface of Mars in December 1971, but the probe stopped transmitting [data] after about two minutes [after landing].”
The Chinese spacecraft Tianwen-1 with the Zhurong rover successfully landed on the surface of the Red Planet on the night of May 15. China was congratulated on this event in Russia and the United States.
