Per this source, landing currently scheduled for 14 May/2300 UTC. Please post any relevant information and updates here.

GO ZHURONG!!!!!

CNSA: "China’s first Mars exploration mission, Tianwen-1 probe has functioned normally since its successful launch on July 23rd, 2020. On February 10th, 2021, Tianwen-1 probe entered the Martian orbit for scientific exploration and huge amount of scientific data are available up to date. With the evaluation of the flight status, Tianwen-1 probe is scheduled to perform landing campaign targeting Utopia Planitia at the proper slot from the early morning of May 15th to May 19th Beijing time."
http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/n6465652/n6...00/content.html

Oficial statement from CNSA, so the window starts today 23:00 UTC, but they can skip it and have two more windows beetween 15 and 19, beijing time is UTC + 8, so we have this 3 dates of periapsis for landing, by Edgar Kaiser:
2021.05.14 23:02:44 Start of the Windows of Landing, oficial statement by CNSA
2021.05.17 00:17:35
2021.05.19 01:32:26
https://twitter.com/df2mz/status/1391876766294331395

Interesting point remembering the importance of amateur radio enthusiasts on space exploration. Without then we would be blind.
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1393164426593902597
Nice Interview with Scott Tilley from British Columbia about listening Tianwen-1 over Mars:
Tianwen-1, on the other hand, has a relatively large antenna with a booming signal. “China probably plans to use it as a relay for future Chinese space missions,” Tilley speculates. “This makes it a good target for hams hoping to bag their first Martian spacecraft.”
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/02/16/...nals-from-mars/

Live of the landing or skip with radio signals by RocketGyan starting at 22:15 UTC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGijtGSUEJs

Live signal from Edgar Kaiser, will go live till 23:00, minutes before landing possible attempt, we should get something in 30 minutes indicating if they will try it today.

Now we have two feeders getting tianwen-1, one live, the other will start 22:15 UTC.

The separation would happen more or less at 18:00 UTC if they will try it today, it will be visible at Edgar Kaiser live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RupTNWUuxsg

They are doing a maneuver now! Separation... or alignment of orbiter to do the separation... or changing from High Gain to Low Gain Antenna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RupTNWUuxsg

Lost it on Edgar Kaiser, so HGA not available, action done, possible atempt landing today.

Signal lost by an action on orbiter at: 16:09 UTC.

Possible cofirmation of landing process happening from Zhurong official weibo account.

"Tianwen1 has entered the landing process! I am expected to start entering the atmosphere of Mars tomorrow (UTC in a few hours) and land at an opportune time"

Landing process started at 16:01 (16:08 minus 7 minutes delay of the signal...)

https://twitter.com/df2mz/status/1393240504020647941

Passed separation time, if all goes well we should got a signal 1 hour from now.
AMSAT got a signal from LGA. Everything seens ok.

The Amsat DL team with their large antenna in Bochum are tracking it live - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEfAxmkBagg

If we have a successful landing there will be a map thread. It may be very sporadically updated depending on how operations are covered.

Phil

Very nice link, High Gain Antenna back alive!!!!! Everything seens perfect...
Possible Separation ok and orbiter returned to his normal position.

Oh my,... 2 live feeds... 1 more to join,.. this is just so perfect.

The landing site is probably the same one indicated at the left here. I have not seen anything specific about the location.

The small crater names were given back in the early 1970s when this area (centered a bit to the west) was considered for Viking under the name Amenthes.

Phil
Click to view attachment

We got a new burn, probably to distance the orbiter from the lander or unlocked something,.. or else...

Regarding the landing burns, the procedure is apparently to de-orbit the whole assembly (both orbiter and lander) into a descent trajectory which intersects the Martian atmosphere, then release the orbiter. After separation, the orbiter portion does another engine burn to raise itself back into Mars orbit to continue its mission. The lander in its entry shell continues down into the atmosphere. This avoids having to provide separate de-orbit engines for the lander capsule, as was the case with the US Viking probes.

Thanks,.. that can explain the last burn, i think the next lose off HGA will be the orbiter changing its direction to image the landing. we should have that 3 hours from now... so the separation was more a drop maneuver then a normal separation... I expect then to release a nice footage of the heat shield, parachute, burn landing. That would be perfect.

The orbiter just turned from HGA to LGA, possible its starting to image or to follow somehow the lander. Very early to do that, possible it is now making the burn to achieve parking orbit again. Less then 3 hours to heat shield burning.

Its impressive that we are geting a good info from a dish with 1 meter in diameter...

HGA back alive, orbiter possible returned to parking orbit. Everything good to wait for the heat shield burn, that will start in 1 hour.

The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) reports : "Ye Peijian, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a key researcher on China’s lunar programme, said during a Thursday lecture at the Beijing Institute of Technology that the rover would land at about 7.11am Saturday Beijing time, local media reported."

So now that the separation of the lander has apparently occurred, there can be no delay to this plan, as was previously an option. It cannot now return to Mars orbit.
So landing expected at 23.11:30 UTC Friday 14th.

Then I presume we need to add on the current light time for radio signals to arrive from Mars, which is 17 minutes 43 seconds.

So I guess landing confirmation signals can arrive no earlier than 23:29 UTC.

A resume from the feed by Edgar Kaiser with his 1 meter dish, clearly showing the deorbit burn, avoid colision burn (small one) and burn to get orbit again (last big one).

Fabulous video of the burn just played on the live feed.

You watching the RocketGyan feed, Tom, or do you have another?

what web site was that, Tom?
If you mean Rocket Gyan's live feed, he was only showing an old video of the initial Tianwen Mars orbit insertion burn.

Nick, it was the RocketGyan feed at the link posted by Huguet here:http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=8627&view=findpost&p=252215

I hadn't been watching much at all, but a few minutes ago tuned in just in time to catch the video. You could see the spacecraft wobble under the influence of the rocket thrust.

Kenny: Ah, thanks, hadn't been listening closely so didn't realize it was the orbit insertion burn. Sorry about gushing over such OLD NEWS.

Perhaps there will be comparable imagery of the lander separation.
Should have landed by now; waiting for the signal to get to Earth....

Rocket Gyan livestream is quoting Chinese commentators stating successful landing, without details yet.

Several rumours of a successful landing on Weibo, including one from an apparent insider to the mission.

I just couldn't get any feeder after Mars go off sight from Edgar Kaiser and AMSAT in Germany.... so i didn't see the maneuvers to image the landing... I think its time to find or put a dish on Americas to this amateur purpose of video streaming huge events like this one.... and it will became more and more common.

Official source saying landing nominal.
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1393358422700183552

CNSA just tweeted #Mars!!!

CGTN:
#BREAKING China's Tianwen-1 probe lands on #Mars
https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial/status/1393365096609435648

And also from Xinhua.
https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4637036026006686

Congratulations to CNSA on this achievement!

Apparently: 109.7 E, 25.1 N; (top middle of this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenthes_quad...Region-mola.png )

A bit North of the crater called Bluff....

From here.

Click to view attachment

CTX image of the landing site. scale is 5.7 m/pixel. The large crater at bottom is 1.8 km across.

WoW!!

Congrats to the Peoples Republic of China


What an amazing achievement for such a new space program!

I hope we start getting Chinese posters!

The coordinates have been moved a bit, to 25.1 N, 109.9 E. That moves it out of the CTX image volcanopele posted and puts it about here:
Click to view attachment


The hills seen in the first orbital image are at lower right.
Phil

Chinese news media are reporting "nine minutes of terror" during the landing, so two more than the usual American seven minutes!

The official landing time from CGTN was 23:18 UTC (GMT) so 7 minutes later than was being predicted by Chinese sources before the descent.

The whole craft (both orbiter and lander) started descending from orbit at about 17:00 UTC and entered the long descent trajectory. The landing module, consisting of the lander and the rover, separated from the orbiter after 3 hours at about 20:00 UTC according to the CNSA. Then, 30 minutes later, so about 20:30 UTC, the orbiter fired its engine to leave the decent trajectory (which it was also now on, temporarily, to drop off the lander) and returned to a safe orbit. After being dropped off the lander had a 3-hour voyage to entry interface. These announced times seem to be approximate.

I believe this is a new technique for Martian atmospheric entry, but was previously used by Galileo at Jupiter and Cassini at Titan.

Xinhua News Agency has reported more details of the landing. No pictures as yet.

It took ground controllers more than an hour to establish the success of the pre-programmed landing. They had to wait for the rover to autonomously unfold its solar panels and antenna to send the signals after landing, and there was a time delay of more than 17 minutes due to the 320-million-km distance between Earth and Mars.

"The Mars landing of the Tianwen-1 mission has been a total success," Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA, announced at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.

It will take a further 7 to 8 days for the rover to detect the surrounding environment and conduct self checks before moving down from the lander to the Martian surface.

Xinhua post-landing update

Is there someone with some insight into the likely comms opportunities? For instance, I have seen speculation that on May 17 Zhurong will communicate with Tianwen-1 via ESA MarsExpress. I would have assumed that Tianwen-1 is over the horizon *much* longer than lower-orbit assets. Am I missing something? Is someone running the numbers?

https://mobile.twitter.com/df2mz/status/1393617519257268225

"This screen shot from CCTV seems to show that the Zhurong rover already communicated with Earth, opened its solar panels and downloaded some data." Edgar Kaiser

"rover landed still; started to communicate with earth; communication finished; rover unlocked/lifted up; solar wings opened; obiter adjusted position . Data downloaded in last 3 lines"

New for Mars orbiters, perhaps. But Beagle 2 was delivered this way on Mars Express' hyperbolic approach

Some rough translations of the screenshot here... I think. Feel free to improve upon them with the times and copyable text.
8:01:24 火星车静态定姿 = Putting the rover in the proper attitude.
8:14:39 火星车对地通信开始 = Start of rover-to-ground comm.
8:32:04 火星车对地通信结束 = End of rover-to-ground comm.
8:38:04 火星车脱插分离，车体抬升 = Rover separation (from lander?) and body lifted.
8:59:04 火星车太阳翼展平 = Rover solar wing deployed.
9:48:39 环绕器-Z对日姿态调轨开始 = Orbiter Z-axis starts moving toward the sun.
12:00:39 固连遥测探头数据点播下传 = On-demand? telemetry download?
12:29:39 近距离遥测探头数据点播下传 = Short-range telemetry download?
13:15:39 降轨，两器分离数据点播下传 = Decrease orbit, separate the two devices? and download data on demand?

Perhaps I am reaching, but is that a picture of a rock up on that screenshot?

Click to view attachment

Mabe they are working with some visual data. But they didn't get it right yet. Hard to wait for the images...

It looks like there's some sort of reflecting going on somewhere creating two image planes here -- one being the reflection of the screen in the glass(?) and the other being whatever is behind it. For some reason I can't quite make sense of what's going on. Just below the rock-like shape, there's this white jagged line. Is that a graphical representation of a radio signal? A reflected bit of light from somewhere? I'm not sure which is the original screen (the white line or the rock-like shape) and which is a reflection of something unrelated.

Both Viking Landers were also deployed from orbit around Mars, like Tianwan - but I think what's unique here, and is more similar to ExoMars-TGO with Schiaparelli, Mars Express with Beagle 2, Galileo and Cassini Huygens compared to Viking - is that in those 4, the 'parent' spacecraft put itself on a collision course before deploying the lander and then doing a divert maneuver. In the case of Viking 1 and 2 - the landers themselves did their own deorbit burn to being entry into the atmosphere.

I think the only unique corner of all those boxes to be ticked yesterday is a parent spacecraft already in orbit putting itself into a trajectory for landing before deploying the lander and then doing a divert maneuver.

Phew.

Some equalization. First part of the screen seens to have a mars on it. Lest part the strange object and the graphic.

I wish the Chinese rover the same solar panel cleaning events and longevity as Spirit and Opportunity. Hopefully there will be the same openness with respect to image release.

I wish the same, but the rover is substantially further north (~25 degrees). I fear it may have more trouble surviving the winter.
cos(2 * 10 degrees) = 0.940
cos(2 * 25 degrees) = 0.643

Yes : the Chinese said that all images will be availalble for public release. And CNES and ESA will have also an access to them

"Accroding to xinhua, tiawen is scheduled to do a orbit change at the upcoming periapsis pass. From a 2 day orbit to a 1/3 day orbit."

Tianwen-1 has already changed its orbit, now it appears to be a 1 day orbit, but probably will be changed again for closers and fast ones.

https://mobile.twitter.com/df2mz/status/1393857334955450370
https://mobile.twitter.com/pyr0bee/status/1...854471529123840