China's Tianwen 1 Mars probe had traveled 300 million kilometers as of Tuesday morning, according to the China National Space Administration.

The administration said in a statement that the spacecraft had been in good condition. By Tuesday morning, the robotic probe had flown 116 days in an Earth-Mars transfer trajectory toward the red planet, around 63.8 million km away from the Earth, it noted.

The spacecraft is programmed to reach the Martian gravitational field in February and then begin to prepare for landing, which is expected to take place in May. After the landing, it will release a rover to conduct scientific exploration.

Tianwen 1, the country's first independent Mars mission, was launched by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket on July 23 at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, opening the nation's planetary exploration program.

If everything goes according to schedule, the 5-metric ton probe, which consists of two major parts - the orbiter and the landing capsule, will travel more than 470 million km before getting captured by the Martian gravitational field in February, when it will be 193 million km away from Earth.

By now, the spacecraft has fulfilled three midcourse corrections and a deep-space orbital maneuver, according to the administration.

Before Tianwen 1, there had been 45 Mars exploration missions since October 1960, when the former Soviet Union launched the world's first Mars-bound spacecraft, and only 17 of them ended up successful.

In the second step in China's Mars exploration program, a larger probe will set off for Mars around 2030 to take samples and then return to the Earth, space officials have said.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

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China's Mars probe completes deep-space maneuver
Beijing (XNA) Oct 11, 2020
China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 successfully conducted a deep-space maneuver on Friday night (Beijing time), according to the China National Space Administration. The probe completed the maneuver at 11 p.m. after its main engine worked for over 480 seconds. The maneuver took place 29.4 million km from Earth, aiming to help the probe achieve a sound rendezvous with Mars. Going forward, the probe will travel along the Earth-Mars transfer orbit for about four months and complete two or three ... read more