BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- The following are the highlights of China's science news from the past week:

MARS LANDING EXPERIMENT

China on Thursday unveiled an experiment simulating the process of a probe hovering, avoiding obstacles and descending to land on Mars.

The experiment was held on a trial ground, the largest in Asia for test landing on extraterrestrial bodies, in Huailai County, north China's Hebei Province.

REMOTE SENSING SATELLITE

China sent a new remote sensing satellite into planned orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Wednesday.

The Jilin-1 Gaofen 02A, which belongs to the Jilin-1 satellite family, was launched by Kuaizhou-1A (KZ-1A), a carrier rocket, at 11:40 a.m. Beijing Time. The satellite is a new optical remote sensing satellite independently developed by Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd., featuring high resolution, wide width and high-speed data transmission.

ANCIENT FOSSIL PROTEINS

Chinese and Danish scientists have successfully retrieved genetic materials from a 1.9-million-year-old fossil of Gigantopithecus blacki, a species of great ape.

The finding, published in a paper on the journal Nature on Wednesday, marks the first time that such ancient protein evidence from fossils in the subtropics was retrieved. Scientists said it sheds new light on the origins and evolution of the long-extinct great ape species.

SALINE LAND

Chinese researchers have discovered that saline land may be reclaimed by the irrigation method of freezing saline water over the soil in winter. In addition, they found that the desalination depth of saline ice meltwater into the saline-alkali soil was greater than that of salt-free ice, according to a recent study paper published in the European Journal of Soil Science. Enditem

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