Five months after returning the first samples from the Moon in 45 years, China pulled off a successful landing on Mars, demonstrating its growing technical prowess in the challenging field of planetary exploration. The May 14 touchdown of China's Tianwen-1 lander, which carried the Zhurong rover, sets the stage for a planned three-month surface mission in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a 2,050-mi.-wide plain in Mars' Northern Hemisphere. The landing site is south of where NASA's Viking 2 spacecraft touched down in 1976.
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