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It was a crucial last step for JWST’s journey through the cosmos, capping off a 30-day voyage from the launchpad to its parking orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth.

Global Times reported that the Tianwen-1 probe lowered its altitude from its parking orbit before its lander-rover combination separated with the orbiter at around 4 p.m.

The orbiter then rose and returned to its parking orbit about half an hour after the separation, to provide relay communication for the landing craft combo, the Chinese space agency told Global Times.

The first stage, housing nine of SpaceX’s Merlin engines, does the initial heavy lifting, getting the rocket off the ground, while the second stage, with just a single Merlin engine, guides it into a parking orbit.

China has already launched two smaller experimental space stations, placed a rover on the little-explored far side of the moon in 2019 and has a spacecraft, the Tianwen-1, in a parking orbit around Mars in anticipation of landing a rover on the surface in the coming months.