Xinhua-The Land of the Sleeping Giant's first Mars exploration has gained many scientific results, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Sept. 18, 2022.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter has been operating normally for over 780 days, while the Zhurong rover has traveled 1,921 meters on Mars' surface, as reported by The State Council, The People's Republic of China Thursday.
China's orbiter and rover, Tianwen-1, has probed and completed scientific exploration missions and acquired 1,480 gigabytes of raw scientific data.
Tianwen-1 probe consists of a lander, an orbiter, and a rover. On May 15, 2021, Tianwen-1 touched down at its preselected landing area in Utopia Planitia, a wide Martian plain, marking the first time the country has landed a probe on planet Mars.
China's First Mars Discovery
The country's researchers have performed a comprehensive study of typical landforms at the landing region, which includes impact craters, concave cones, and grooves that revealed an important link between the formation of ridges and the water activity of the planet.
With the aid of spectral data and camera images, a China-led team of researchers found water-bearing minerals in plate-like hard crust near the landing area. It proved that there had been several liquid water activities in the landing area one billion years ago.
Integrating the rover's moving rutting with the camera images and other information, the team also figured out that the soil in the landing area has a massive bearing strength and low friction parameters.
China's Mars exploration results show the impact of the water and wind activities on the Red Planet's environmental changes and geological evolution. The exploration also enriches the human scientific understanding of the environmental and geological changes on Mars.
Photo released on Jan. 1, 2022 by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows the group photo of the orbiter and Mars.
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Red Planet's Vast Ocean
This first-ever China-exploration strongly supports the hypothesis that there was once an ocean on Mars' Utopia Planitia. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) report, the Red Planet held more water than the Earth's the Arctic Ocean, based on the agency's scientists who used ground-based observatories to measure the water signature in Mars's atmosphere.
The early scientists of NASA have been searching for an answer to why this vast water left Mars' surface.
In addition, the expedition's researchers also used the Tianwen-1 data to obtain several outstanding scientific achievements, including the relationship between surface erosion degrees and rock density on the surface of Mars, the neutral particles in the near-planet space environment, the distribution of ions, and the gravitational field of Mars.
CNSA announced the country's first Mars exploration on April 24, China's Space day.
Tianwen was derived from the long poem "Tian Wen," which means Heavenly Questions or Questions to the Heaven, written by one of Ancient China's greatest poets, Qu Yuan (about 340-278 BC)
In Tianwen, the long poem, Qu Yuan raised a series of queries involving the sky, stars, natural phenomena, and the world. Showing his doubts about traditional customs and the spirit of seeking what is the truth, according to an article in the People's Republic of China.
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