Rocket for mission to Mars on launchpad

China's first independent Mars exploration program has come one step closer to reality with the Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket being moved to its launchpad at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province on Friday morning.

The rocket, to lift Tianwen 1 to Mars, was taken out of its testing complex at around 8 am and spent nearly 2 hours on tracks on its way to the launchpad, the China National Space Administration said in a statement.

It will blast off between late July and early August to transport Tianwen 1, or Quest for Heavenly Truth 1, to an Earth-Mars transfer trajectory. Tianwen 1 is designed to orbit the red planet and land a rover on the Martian surface for scientific operations.

The Long March 5, the biggest and most technologically sophisticated rocket in China, was transported by ship to Hainan in May and assembled and tested at the Wenchang center, the only coastal launch facility in the country.

After being moved to the launchpad, engineers will conduct final examinations and load its propellants before the launch, it added.

China approved its first independent Mars exploration program in January 2016. The Chinese probe consists of three parts－the orbiter, the lander and the rover－and they will separate in Mars orbit after a spaceflight lasting about seven months. The orbiter will remain in orbit for scientific operations and signal relay while the lander-rover combination will make an autonomous descent and landing.

The rover, which is expected to become the world's seventh of its kind and the first from Asia on the planet, has six wheels and four solar panels and carries six scientific instruments. It weighs more than 200 kilograms and will work for about three months on the planet, designers said.

In addition to China, the United States and the United Arab Emirates also have plans to send probes to Mars in the near future.

The US aims to launch the Perseverance, a car-sized, six-wheeled rover, between July 30 and August 15 to collect rock samples to be returned to Earth for analysis in about a decade.

The Arab world's first interplanetary mission, the UAE's Martian orbiter, named Amal, or Hope in Arabic, is scheduled to launch from Japan on Monday.