China readies its first robotic Mars mission


The rapidly ascending Chinese space program is setting its sights on a new target: Mars.China plans to send an orbiter to the Red Planet on a Russian launch vehicle later this year, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The nation's first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, will piggyback on the ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission, a Russian spacecraft that will seek to return soil samples from Phobos, the larger of Mars's two tiny moons.

Full story by John Matson on Scientific American

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