Yao Ming is appointed as one of China's ambassadors to Mars along with ten other individuals. They were selected onward the 2020 Mars mission by the China National Space Administration.
Yao and ten other celebrities including the coach of the women's Olympic gold-medal-winning volleyball team Lang Ping and China's famous composer and conductor Tan Dun, as reported by South China Morning Post.
Other appointed ambassadors are maestro of Chinese traditional instrument guzheng Yuan Sha, award-winning science-fiction writer Liu Cixin, three members of the Chinese boy band TFBOYS, and opera singers Warren Mok, Dai Yuqiang and Wei Song.
China first announced its Mars 2020 mission earlier this year. The mission will to carry a solar-powered probe to the surface of Mars using Chinese-made Long March-5 rocket. The rocket will be launched from the Wenchang Space Centre in Hainan province, southern China.
As an ambassador to Mars, Yao Ming and the ten other members is appointed with a task to help encourage interest in China's 2020 unmanned mission to Mars according to Chinese newspaper People's Daily Online and quoted by Daily Mail. The ambassador is also expected to promote the advancement science and technology in China.
China has aimed to explore the red planet to study its features. The China National Space Administration has unveiled its orbiter, lander and rover for its first unmanned mission to Mars last August. The goal of the first unmanned mission is to study its atmophere, soil and environment in Mars.
The mission will be launched in 2020 and expected to reach Mars by 2021. The orbiter which will carry the lander and rover will take on the seven months journey. Subsequently, it the lander will separate iself from orbiter and landing in a low latitude area in the northern hemisphere of Mars. Afterwards, the rover which is designed to operate for three Martian months will explore the surface of the planet.
Yao and 10 other celebrities were appointed as the ambassador to encourage interest on the mission and encourage the science and technology in China.
Watch the news of Yao's appointment as China's ambassador to Mars from News Beat Social below:
