Yinghuo-1
Yinghuo-1 — China's first Mars orbiter, a small craft meant to study Mars alongside Russia's Phobos-Grunt, which carried it inside its adapter from the launch on 8 November 2011. Phobos-Grunt's engine never fired to leave Earth orbit, so Yinghuo-1 never separated or operated; it re-entered with Phobos-Grunt over the Pacific on 15 January 2012. (Its orbit is shown representatively.)
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- CNSA
- Launched
- November 8, 2011
- Status
- Lost
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 0.996 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 1,461,182 km
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Venus
- 0.276 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
Yinghuo-1, "Firefly", was China's first spacecraft meant for Mars: a 115 kg orbiter (113 kg in one table of NASA's history Beyond Earth) that was to study Mars together with Russia's Phobos-Grunt, which carried it inside its adapter. The pair were launched on a Zenit rocket from Baikonur on 8 November 2011 at 20:16 UTC. Phobos-Grunt's propulsion unit was to fire about two and a half hours later to send them toward Mars. It never did, leaving both in low Earth orbit; the Russian investigation gave the probable cause as a programming error that restarted two channels of the onboard computer at once. Yinghuo-1 was to have separated only in orbit around Mars, so it never separated and never operated. Both re-entered the atmosphere on 15 January 2012; US Strategic Command gave 17:46 UTC, over the Pacific off South America.
- 2011Yinghuo-1 launches toward Mars on a Zenit rocketLaunch
Inside Russia's Phobos-Grunt.
- 2011Stranded in Earth orbitMilestone
Phobos-Grunt's engine never fires to leave for Mars.
- 2012Re-enters with Phobos-GruntMission end
Over the Pacific, never having operated.
Images
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