BEIJING (AP) - China landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time on Saturday in the latest advance for its space program, state media said.Plans call for a rover to stay in the lander for a few days of diagnostic tests before rolling down a ramp to explore an icy area of Mars known as Utopia Planitia.
It will join an American rover that arrived at the red planet in February.China’s first Mars landing follows its launch last month of the main section of what will be a permanent space station and a mission that brought back rocks from the moon late last year."China has left a footprint on Mars for the first time, an important step for our country’s space exploration," the official Xinhua News Agency said in announcing the landing on one of.