China successfully launched an unmanned probe to Mars on Thursday in its first independent mission to another planet, in a display of its technological prowess and ambition to join an elite club of space-faring nations.

China’s largest carrier rocket, the Long March 5 Y-4, blasted off with the probe at 12.41pm (0441 GMT) from Wenchang Space Launch Centre on the southern island of Hainan.

In 2020, Mars is at its closest to Earth, at a distance of about 55 millionkm , in a window of about a month that opens once every 26 months.

The probe is expected to reach Mars in February where it will try to land in Utopia Planitia, a plain in the northern hemisphere, and deploy a rover to explore for 90 days.

If successful, the Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven”, the name of a poem written two millennia ago, will make China the first country to orbit, land and deploy a rover in its inaugural mission.

Since 1960, half of all the 50-plus missions to Mars including flybys had failed.

Challenges multiply for those attempting a landing, from ensuring a precise deceleration of the spacecraft to navigating the planet’s sometimes violent atmosphere.