China says Mars probe stable; no word on reusable spacecraft

The administration said that Tianwen-1 was in stable condition, having completed its first mid-course orbital correction early last month.

China’s Mars probe Tianwen-1, which blasted into space in July, is now more than 15 million kilometers (9 million miles) from Earth en route to the red planet, the National Space Administration said Saturday.

A Long March-5 rocket carrying the Tianwen-1 Mars probe lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's Hainan Province. (AP)

The administration said that Tianwen-1 was in stable condition, having completed its first mid-course orbital correction early last month. It will be about 195 million kilometers (118 million miles) from Earth when it arrives at Mars around February, having traveled 470 million kilometers (292 million miles) in all to get there.

The administration, however, has yet to release information about a mysterious reusable experimental spacecraft that returned to Earth a week ago after a two-day flight.

The spacecraft consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, and marks China’s most ambitious Mars mission yet as it seeks to join the United States in successfully landing a spacecraft on the planet. It was blasted into space aboard a Long March-5 on July 23 during a month when the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. also took advantage of a shortened distance between the planets to launch similar missions.

That is also seen as an attempt to put China on the leading edge of space flight. The U.S. has for years been operating the secretive X-37B space plane that remains in orbit for months.

China’s military-backed space program has developed rapidly since it became just the third country after Russia and the U.S. to put a man in space in 2003. Last year, China’s Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft from any country to land on the far side of the moon.