Loosely translated to “Questions to Heaven,” China’s most ambitious mission yet, the “Tianwen-1,” is sending three spacecrafts to Mars. The launch will follow UAE’s first-ever mission to the Red Planet.
The three spacecrafts are an orbiter, a lander and a rover, with help from the Long March 5 rocket, China will be sending off to space. If all goes well, China is set to become the second nation to ever land a rover on the Red Planet. The orbiter’s task is to collect martian data from above, while the lander helps the rover safely touch the ground on the planet’s surface, from which the wheeled vehicle rolls out to start its journey. The Tianwen-1 is just one mission among a long list of other big future space projects for China, like visiting an asteroid or exploring Jupiter in the 2030s.