China lands a rover on Mars

AT 17:17 GMT on May 14th , a Chinese mission which had been orbiting Mars since February 10th, made a subtle adjustment to its trajectory—one that put it on course to hit the planet’s surface six hours later. After three hours, however, it broke itself in two. One part readjusted its path so as to skim past the planet and stay in orbit. The other, a sealed shell with a heatshield on the outside and a precious cargo within, plummeted on towards the surface at 17,000km an hour.It entered the atmosphere about 125km above the ground, blazing across the alien sky like a meteor. Once friction with the air had bled off most of its kinetic energy it deployed a parachute. The shell broke open, revealing a landing platform with four legs, a rocket engine and a six-wheeled rover fastened to its top. The engine ignited. When the platform had just 100 metres left to go it paused briefly, hovering as its sensors looked for obstacles that would impede a safe landing. Then it set itself down in a cloud of red dust on Utopia Planitia, one of the great flat plains of Mars’s northern hemisphere.