The China Space Administration has shared several shots of Mars sent by the Tianwen-1 orbiter and its Zhurong rover on the surface of the red planet.’
The China Space Administration ( CNSA ) has published new images sent by the Tianwen-1 probe, which is orbiting Mars, and its rover, Zhurong, which is currently traveling the surface of the red planet. The images include a photo of the orbiter and our neighbor, a close-up of the probe, an ice cap in the north polar area of Mars as seen from orbit, and a landscape of the surface taken by the rover.
Launched in July 2020, the Tianwen 1 robotic probe, named after an ancient Chinese poem, made a total journey of 475 million kilometers and several maneuvers before entering Martian orbit on February 10, 2021.
After more than three months of preparations, a landing capsule released by the probe descended through the Martian atmosphere and finally landed on May 15, making China the second country after the United States to have successfully carried out a landing on Mars.
On May 22, the Chinese Zhurong rover was deployed on Martian soil, becoming the sixth rover on Mars, following the five predecessor rovers sent by NASA. In fact, the Chinese mission left just a few days before the American one, although the Perseverance rover landed on Martian soil before.
Zhurong, named after a Chinese god of fire, has six wheels and is powered by solar energy. With 240 kilos of weight, carries onboard a set of instruments to explore the environment, such as two cameras on the mast to take images of nearby rocks and plan their movements, a multispectral camera to identify the minerals that make up the terrain, a ground-penetrating radar, a detector magnetic field, a weather station, and an instrument to measure the chemical composition of dust and rocks. All of them will help you collect geological data and make a map of the environment. What it learns will serve the Chinese agency to plan more ambitious future missions, since it is more focused on demonstrating that Chinese technology is capable of ‘conquering’ Mars as well.
