Tianwen-1 (Chinese: 天问一号) (also referred to as TW-1) is an interplanetary mission by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) which sent a robotic spacecraft to Mars, consisting of six spacecraft: an orbiter, two deployable cameras, lander, remote camera, and the Zhurong rover. The spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly five tons, is one of the heaviest probes launched to Mars and carries 14 scientific instruments. It is the first in a series of planned missions undertaken by CNSA as part of its Planetary Exploration of China program. The mission's scientific objectives include: investigation of Martian surface geology and internal structure, search for indications of current and past presence of water, and characterization of the space environment and the atmosphere of Mars. The mission was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on 23 July 2020 on a Long March 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle. After seven months of transit through the inner Solar System, the spacecraft entered Martian orbit on 10 February 2021. For the next three months the probe studied the target landing sites from a reconnaissance orbit. On 14 May 2021, the lander/rover portion of the mission successfully touched down on Mars, making China the third nation to make a soft landing on and establish communication from the Martian surface, after the Soviet Union and the United States. On 22 May 2021, the Zhurong rover drove onto the Martian surface via the descent ramps on its landing platform. With the successful deployment of the rover, China became the second nation to accomplish this feat, after the United States. In addition, China is the second nation to orbit and the first one to carry out landing and rovering mission on Mars successfully on its maiden attempt. Tianwen-1 is also the second mission to capture audio recordings on the Martian surface, after United States' Perseverance rover. The "smallsat" deployed by the Zhurong rover on the Martian surface consists of a "drop camera" which photographed both the rover itself as well as the Tianwen-1 lander. With a mass of less than 1 kg, the Tianwen-1 remote camera is the lightest artificial object on Mars as of May 2021. On 31 December 2021, the Tianwen-1 orbiter deployed a second deployable camera (TDC-2) into Mars orbit which captured photographs of the Tianwen-1 in orbit to celebrate its achievement of the year and a selfie stick payload was deployed to its working position on orbiter to take images of the orbiter's components and Chinese flag on 30 January 2022 to celebrate the Chinese New Year. In September 2022, the mission was awarded the World Space Award by the International Astronautical Federation. The Tianwen-1 mission was the second of three Martian exploration missions launched during the July 2020 window, after the United Arab Emirates Space Agency's Hope orbiter, and before NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which landed the Perseverance rover with the attached Ingenuity helicopter drone. The Zhurong rover lost contact in 2023 after failing to awake from a scheduled hibernation.
Nomenclature China's planetary exploration program is officially dubbed the "Tianwen Series". "Tianwen-1" (Chinese: 天问一号) is the program's first mission, and subsequent planetary missions will be numbered sequentially. The name Tianwen is from the poem of the same name written by Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC). The title means "Questions to Tian", a Chinese term for both the sky and heavens. Tianwen-1's rover is named Zhurong (Chinese: 祝融号), after a Chinese mytho-historical figure usually associated with fire and light. The name was chosen through an online poll held from January to February 2021.
Earlier attempt China's Mars program started in partnership with Russia. In November 2011, the Russian spacecraft Fobos-Grunt, destined for Mars and Phobos, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Russian spacecraft carried with it an attached secondary spacecraft, the Yinghuo-1, which was intended to become China's first Mars orbiter (Fobos-Grunt also carried experiments from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the American Planetary Society). However, Fobos-Grunt's main propulsion unit failed to boost the Mars-bound stack from its initial Earth parking orbit and the combined multinational spacecraft and experiments eventually reentered the atmosphere of Earth in January 2012. In 2014, China subsequently began an independent Mars project.
Mission overview
The new Mars spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter and a lander with an attached rover, was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and is managed by the National Space Science Centre (NSSC) in Beijing. The mission was formally approved in 2016. On 14 November 2019, CNSA invited some foreign embassies and international organizations to witness hovering and obstacle avoidance test for the Mars Lander of China's first Mars exploration mission at the extraterrestrial celestial landing test site. It was the first public appearance of China's Mars exploration mission. As the mission preparation proceeded, in April 2020, the mission was formally named "Tianwen-1". On 23 July 2020, Tianwen-1 was launched from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the island of Hainan atop a Long March 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle.
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