The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has published images from its Tianwen-1 mission, which shows the spacecraft orbiting Mars. China launched the Tianwen-1 mission in July 2020. It has an orbiter, a lander, and a rover, as seen above Mars in the image below.
According to a WeChat post in Chinese, this image shows the Tianwen-1 spacecraft passing over Mars' north pole. The white of Mars' polar ice caps can be seen on the planet below; however, unlike Earth's polar ice caps, which are made entirely of water ice, the Martian ice caps are made up of dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) and water ice. Other features on Mars, such as the famed ice Korolev crater, may also be seen.
The China National Space Administration published on Saturday four pictures taken by its #Tianwen 1 #Mars mission, including the 1st full photo of the mission orbiter. pic.twitter.com/J4xRmFfS9v
— China Pictorial (@CHINA_PICTORIAL) January 2, 2022
China's Tianwen-1 Shares New Photo of Mars
The lander element of the project and the orbiter landed on Mars in the Utopia Planitia region in May of last year. After then, the lander dropped the rover to the ground. Zhurong is the name of the rover that is now investigating the Martian surface. Zhurong is a Chinese fire god.
Xinhua, China's national news agency, reported: "As of Dec. 31, 2021, the Tianwen-1 orbiter had been working in orbit for 526 days, at a distance of about 350 million km above Earth. Zhurong had been working on the surface of the Red Planet for 225 Martian days and traveled 1,400 meters, according to the CNSA."
"The Tianwen-1 mission is carrying out the intended exploration and test duties, acquiring roughly 560 gigabytes (GB) of data," Xinhua continued. The orbiter and rover are both in fine working order, according to the CNSA.
The golden spacecraft can be seen against a pinkish landscape studded with bright-white frost spots, which the CNSA interpreted as ice caps, in two of the photographs.
"Solar wings and radar antennas are in good condition," the agency said on its website (per South China Morning Post) on Saturday.
Unlike ice seen in Earth's polar regions, Martian ice is made up of a combination of frozen carbon dioxide and water. One of the photographs was captured on the planet's surface by the Zhu Rong rover.
Tianwen-1's Mission
According to CVBJ Biz, the Tianwen-1 rover touched down on the Utopia Planitia plain On May 15, making China the third country to accomplish so, decades after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Tianwen-1 is China's first Mars exploration mission and the first in history to integrate travel, orbital entry, and descent into one mission.
Chinese scientists want to discover further signs of water or ice on Mars and conduct study into the material composition of the planet's surface and temperature features. According to the space agency, the Tiawen-1 orbiter and Zhu Rong rover are still in good condition.
China is also working on a second mission, dubbed Tianwen-2, to collect rock samples from Mars and bring them to Earth in 2030, according to Zhang Rongqiao, the Tianwen-1 project's primary designer.
RELATED ARTICLE : Chinese Zhurong Rover Gets Mileage of More Than 800 Meters on Mars Crossing Terrains of Rocks, Craters, and Dunes
Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.
