China's first-ever Mars rover on Saturday drove down the ramp of a landing capsule leaving China's first "footprints" on the red planet, state-run media reported, and becoming the second country to land and operate a rover on the planet after the United States.
The rover, called Zhurong, set its wheels on Martian soil at 10:40 a.m. Beijing time Saturday and began roaming the planet, the media quoted the China National Space Administration as saying.
The six-wheeled solar-powered rover is expected to have a lifespan of about three months and will record the Martian landscape with high-resolution images, analyze the planet's material composition and search for traces of water ice, among other tasks, Xinhua News Agency reported.