China's Tianwen-1 Mars Mission Wins Prestigious Award at International Space Congress

KotabumiNews - China's Tianwen 1 Mars mission was awarded one of the space world's most prestigious awards at the 73rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris.

The Tianwen 1 mission was judged to have successfully carried out a historic first combined orbit, landing and exploration in a single launch. The Tianwen 1 spacecraft took off from the Wenchang spaceport on July 23, 2020 and entered Mars orbit in February 2021. The mission's solar-powered rover Zhurong then successfully landed on the Red Planet's Utopia Planitia plain in May 2020.

The mission carried out a historic combined orbit, landing, and exploration for the first time in a single launch. The achievement was rewarded with the International Astronautical Federation's annual space achievement award on Sunday 18 September 2022 during the 73rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris.

International Astronautical Federation (IAF) President Pascale Ehrenfreund introduced the team behind the spacecraft development at this year's keynote lecture at IAC. Jilian Wang, vice president at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST) which developed the spacecraft, presented an overview of the mission and outlined some of the key scientific achievements so far in the keynote, including global mapping of the Red Planet and back data that offers evidence of an ancient Martian ocean.

Wang also recorded visual highlights from the mission, including a Mars orbit selfie and an orbital insertion video. Tianwen 1 continues an extended science mission in Mars orbit, but on the surface, the Zhurong rover is currently hibernating to view winter in Mars' northern hemisphere.

The 240 kilogram solar-powered rover is currently expected to resume activity in December or January. "That's when more solar energy reaches Mars," said a member of the mission team during a question-and-answer session.

China also wants to follow up on its Mars success with an ambitious mission to collect samples from Mars and send them to Earth. The mission is named Tianwen 3 and will involve a pair of launches of Long March 5, China's largest rocket, sometime in 2028.

The mission is to send a lander and orbiter spacecraft to the Red Planet. Prior to this, the country aimed to conduct its first asteroid sample return mission with Tianwen 2, which launches sometime in 2025.

The mission is also likely to be open to international cooperation. "We want to partner with more space agencies, space companies, universities and all kinds of other entities," Wang said.

Japan's Hayabusa2 team's asteroid sample return mission won the award in 2021. China previously won an IAF award in 2020 for the Chang'e 4 landing on the far side of the moon.