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Mars probe to carry 13 types of payload on 2020 mission

September 21, 2017

BEIJING, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's Mars probe will carry 13 types of payload, including six rovers, in its first mission to the planet, scheduled for 2020.

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"The Mars exploration program is well underway," said Zhang Rongqiao, chief architect of the Mars mission, at the Beijing International Forum on Lunar and Deep-space Exploration, which opened Wednesday. "The payloads will be used to collect data on the environment, morphology, surface structure and atmosphere of Mars."

China plans to send a spacecraft to orbit, land and deploy a rover on Mars in 2020. The probe will be launched on a Long March-5 carrier rocket from the Wenchang space launch center in southern China's Hainan Province.

The lander will separate from the orbiter at the end of a journey of around seven months and touch down in a low latitude area in the northern hemisphere of Mars where the rover will explore the surface.