China, Russia Establish Joint Mars Exploration Team
China and Russia established the first joint Mars Exploration (Firefly-1) Team on Mar. 6 in Beijing, to speed up the Mars probing mission being carried out by both countries.
The Mars probe Firefly-1 has four purposes, which include exploring the distribution and variation law of space magnetic field, ionosphere and particles of Mars, exploring escape rate of Mars air ion, exploring terrain, landform and sandstorm of Mars, and exploring gravitational field in the equatorial area of Mars, said Wu Ji, leading scientist of the joint project and director of Center for Space Science and Applied Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Research and developing of Firefly-1 step to dielectric properties test, environmental test and EMC test of the whole satellite final-model. The probe will be produced in mid 2009.
CHINA and Russia agreed to jointly send a probe to Mars and its moon, Phobos, two years ago. According to the agreement, Russia will launch an explorer Phobos-Grunt carrying a Chinese-made exploration device to take samples of Phobos soil.
The agreement is a milestone in space cooperation between the two countries.
