China's Mars Rover Nails Landing

[Judi Lynn]

China joins the U.S. as the only nations to successfully land rovers on Mars.
By KRISTIN HOUSER Published 9 minutes ago

China's Mars rover has survived "nine minutes of terror" to successfully touch down on the Red Planet — making China only the second nation to ever land a probe on Mars.

The background: China's Mars mission began in July 2020 with the China National Space Administration's (CNSA) launch of Tianwen-1, a combination orbiter, lander, and rover.

That craft orbited the Red Planet for more than three months before China took the next daring step in the mission: sending the lander and rover down to the surface.

Touch down: On May 14, the lander carrying China's Mars rover, Zhurong, detached from the orbiter. It then began a fiery plunge through the Martian atmosphere, using a parachute and then rockets to slow its descent.

More:
https://www.freethink.com/articles/chinas-mars-rover-landing

[CentralMass]

1. Impressive.

[soothsayer]

2. Looks like a ufo

[eppur_se_muova]

3. "only the second nation ..." Ummm ... third, actually. USSR was first.

The Mars 3 and Mars 5 landers only transmitted for a short time after landing, however.

[Duppers]

4. "China's Rover Hit a Mars Milestone ...

.. That Took NASA Decades"
https://scitechdaily.com/chinas-zhurong-rover-hit-a-mars-milestone-that-took-nasa-decades-heres-whats-next/


It's easy when you steal all the technology!!

[hunter]

5. Knowing something is possible is the biggest hurdle.

China has plenty of engineers who can do the rest.

How many Nazi "secrets" made the U.S.A. space program possible?

My grandfather was a U.S. Army Air Corp officer during World War II.

During the war he mysteriously acquired a knack for exotic metals like titanium and was later an engineer for the Apollo Project.

I'd say most of the technology was home grown here in the U.S.A., but a lot of it was acquired elsewhere.

For example, during the Cold War the U.S.A. obtained most of its titanium from the USSR using bogus front corporations.

The SR-71 spy plane was 92% titanium.

In the modern world nations don't tend to respect international patent law or trade "secrets" that interfere with their own national interests.

Trade secrets are a very difficult thing to keep these days, with computers attached to the internet, tiny cameras, micro SD cards, etc.. Reverse engineering has become a very sophisticated business.

Failures to duplicate a competitor's projects are usually due to a lack of intellectual and/or physical resources. 21st century China now has both the intellectual and physical resources to land rovers on the moon.

Good for them.