China integrally hoisted and installed the antenna reflector for its Mars exploration mission in Wuqing District, north China's Tianjin Municipality on Saturday.

As the key equipment for receiving the data from the Mars exploration, the high-performance antenna is 72 meters high and weighs 2,700 tons. Composing of 1,328 high-precision panels, it is about the size of nine basketball courts with the diameter of its main reflector of as long as 70 meters.

New technologies have been applied in the design of the antenna, according to Li Hongwei, deputy director of the 39th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation.

"We use the umbrella structure to support such a huge reflector, which weighs 450 tons, and hoisted it integrally," Li said.

The successful hoisting and installation lasted for over one hour. Further improvement of the antenna body and equipment debugging will be carried out.

China's first Mars exploration project will receive data signals from as far as 400 million kilometers away, an increase of 1,000 times compared with that of the country's lunar exploration.

The 70-meter-aperture antenna is the largest one in the Mars exploration data receiving system built by the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It will constellate with two established antennas from Miyun District in Beijing and one from Kunming city, southwest China's Yunnan Province, for receiving data from the Red Planet.

"The signal from Mars is so attenuated that without this large-aperture antenna, the task cannot be accomplished," said Li Chunlai, deputy chief designer of China's first Mars exploration project. "For receiving the signal from the farthest point, we will probably have to use the 50-meter and 40-meter antennas in Miyun, and the 40-meter antenna in Kunming together at the same time, and synthesize the data so as to complete the data reception mission."

Launched in 2018, the antenna project will build the largest single-aperture fully movable antenna in Asia, providing a solid foundation for deep space exploration in China

China set up its first Mars exploration mission in 2016, aiming to launch a Mars probe in 2020 and complete orbiting, landing and roving in one mission.