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After traveling through space for seven months, China’s Tianwen 1 has reached Mars and successfully entered the planet’s orbit on Wednesday—bringing it one step closer to landing on the surface.

Tianwen 1, which got its name from an ancient Chinese poem, is made up of an orbiter (轨道飞行器), lander and a six-wheeled rover (巡视器) carrying scientific instruments, according to the China National Space Administration(CNSA).

The CNSA said the probe (航天探测器) is expected to land on the planet’s surface in May or June, and the rover is expected to stay for three months, with the hope that it can gather important information about Mars’ geological structure, atmosphere, environment and soil, and search for any signs of water.

Tianwen 1 was launched last July, and its arrival in the Mars’s orbit makes China the sixth country in history to reach Mars. So far, the United States and the former Soviet Union are the only two countries to land a spacecraft on the surface of Mars. But the European Space Agency and India have already sent spacecraft to enter the planet’s orbit—and on Tuesday, the UAE (阿拉伯联合酋长国) joined their ranks, with its Hope Probe successfully entering orbit.

With Tianwen 1, China is the first nation to attempt at sending both an orbiter and a rover on its first Mars mission on its own. According to the scientific team behind the mission, the probe will orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and carry out experiments with an orbiter. By contrast, NASA sent many orbiters to Mars before ever attempting a landing, since pulling off the landing is a far more difficult task.

China’s first attempt to reach Mars was actually in 2011 with the Yinghuo 1 probe, which was supposed to orbit the red planet and study its environmental structure. It was launched (发射) from Kazakhstan together with the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission in November that year.