By December 10th, the Aerospace Development Committee had officially established the Tianwen series of exploration missions for 2018:
The launch vehicle was tentatively set as the New Yuan-2B (three-stage configuration), with a Mars orbital capacity of 10.4 tons.
In total, plans were made to launch four Mars surface explorers, designated from Tianwen-1 to Tianwen-4, all with identical functions.
The Tianwen-1 to -4 missions' explorers consisted of two parts: the lander and the propulsion system, with the latter responsible for decelerating and delivering the 6.5-ton lander into the Martian atmosphere.
Each lander had three components: a heat shield, a surface rover, and a decelerator.
