As Beijing's residents bask among the spring blossoms, engineers and technicians in the capital's northwestern suburbs are busily preparing for a challenging maneuver involving a spacecraft hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth.
The team members－spacecraft control professionals at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center－are making all-out efforts to ensure that Tianwen 1, China's first independent interplanetary mission, will soon safely land a rover on Mars to conduct scientific tests.
"The next step will be the entry, descent and landing procedures, which will be the most challenging and risky parts of the entire mission," Cui Xiaofeng, chief controller of the mission at the center, told China Daily in an exclusive interview this month.