China's Mars probe over 100mn km away from Earth

Beijing, Dec 15 (IANS) The China National Space Administration on Tuesday announced that the country's Mars probe, Tianwen-1, is currently more than 100 million km away from Earth and is functioning normally.As of 9 p.m. on Monday, the Mars probe had flown in space for 144 days and travelled more than 360 million km, reports Xinhua news agency. It was more than 100 million km away from Earth and about 12 million km away from Mars.The Mars probe will likely be about 190 million km away from Earth when it reaches the vicinity of Mars.Since it was launched on July 23, the Mars probe has captured an image of both Earth and the moon and taken selfies. It has carried out three orbital corrections, a deep-space manoeuver and self-checks on multiple payloads.It will conduct several orbital corrections and will likely decelerate to enter the Mars orbit in February 2021, according to the Administration.
--IANS ksk/