China is scheduled to launch an unmanned probe to Mars on Thursday, aiming to demonstrate its technological prowess as it makes a bid for global leadership in space with its first independent mission to visit another planet, reported Reuters.
The probe, due to blast off on the Long March 5 Y-4 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in the southern island province of Hainan, is expected to reach Mars in February where it will attempt to deploy a rover to explore the planet for 90 days.
If successful, the latest mission – Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven”, a Chinese poem penned two millennia ago – will make China the first country to orbit, land and deploy a rover in its inaugural mission.
Eight spacecraft – American, European and Indian – are currently either orbiting Mars or on its surface with other missions underway or planned.