After seven months of space travel, China’s Zhu Rong Rover has successfully landed on Mars.

Orbiting three months and “nine minutes of terror”, China became the third country in the world to safely land a rover on Mars, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

It is said that Zhu Rong had to face risk for 9 minutes as its harsh environment and extremely powerful dust storms before landed on the surface of Mars.

Zhu Rong is part of China’s first Mars probe, Tianwen-1, which was launched in July 2020. It has three parts – orbiter, lander and rover. The probe reached Mars and started orbiting in February.

A rover was protected by a heat shield; China’s Mars landing craft carrying the rover had to detach itself from the orbiter 70km above the surface, before hurtling towards the surface at a speed of nearly 5km per second.

According to South China Morning Post, A CNSA researcher said  Zhu Rong’s Mars landing would be “much harder” than China’s lunar rover Jade Rabbit , which landed on the moon’s surface in 2013, because the much greater distance from Earth made radio transmission more difficult.

CNAS has said that, rover Zhu Rong was named after the Chinese mythical god of fire and war. Six-wheeled Zhu Rong rover has landed in the Utopia Planesia, a northern hemisphere of Mars.

Besides Zhu Rong, there are two other operational rovers on Mars – Curiosity and Perseverance – both of them operated by Nasa, which has landed so far 10 missions on the red planet.

After rover has landed on surface of Mars, China become second country after the United States to land a rover on Mars.

In the next three months, Zhu Rong will send information about the surface and atmosphere of Mars to Earth. Mars is about 320 million kilometers distance from Earth. It will take 20 minutes to reach radio frequency to the earth.