Thousands of years ago, Chinese poet Qu Yuan wrote the poem Tianwen, meaning Quest for Heavenly Truth. He came up with a series of questions about the sky, stars, nature and the world around us. The poem showed his spirit of finding the truth.
Inspired (激励) by the great poet, China named its latest series of planetary exploration missions (行星探测任 务) after the poem in 2020. The first one in the series—a Mars exploration mission—has been named Tianwen 1, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said on April 24, 2020, China's Space Day. This shows China's wish to explore the universe (宇宙) .
China has made great progress in space exploration. In 1970, China sent its first man-made Earth satellite (卫星), becoming the fifth country in the world to send a man-made satellite independently. Since 2003, China has carried out six Shenzhou manned missions. China's moon exploration missions—the Chang'e series—started in 2007. In December 2018, China became the first country to send the probe (探测器) Chang'e 4 to the moon's far side.
The Tianwen series will follow the Shenzhou and Chang'e series and move further into space. The first step is to send a Mars probe, which means the start of China's exploration of the red planet. The probe is planned to circle around, land on and explore Mars in one mission. It is the first to finish all of these tasks in one mission. The Long March 5 rocket has sent the probe to Mars.
After this mission, China plans to visit Mars again in 2028, aiming to collect soil from the ground of the planetand bring it to Earth. Around 2030, China will explore Jupiter and several small planets.
