1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

See images of Mars captured by China’s Tianwen-1 mission

By

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released pictures from its Tianwen-1 mission, including the spacecraft in orbit around Mars. The Tianwen-1 mission was launched in July 2020 and consists of an orbiter, seen above Mars in the image below, as well as a lander and a rover.

According to a post on Chinese-language WeChat, this image shows the Tianwen-1 orbiter over the north pole of Mars. You can see the white of Mars’s polar ice caps on the planet below, but unlike the polar ice caps on Earth which are composed of water ice, the Martian ice caps are composed of dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) as well as water ice. You can also see other features on Mars such as the famous icy Korolev crater.

The Tianwen-1 orbiter is seen above Mars. Xinhua/CNSA

In addition to the orbiter portion of the mission, the lander part of the mission touched down on Mars in May last year in the Utopia Planitia region. The lander then released the rover onto the surface. The rover that is currently exploring the Martian surface is named Zhurong, after a traditional Chinese fire god.

Recommended Videos

A further image was captured by the rover, showing the Martian surface. It reveals the topography of Mars, including craters and rocks:

An image of the Martian surface captured by the Zhurong rover. Xinhau/CNSA

As reported by Chinese state news agency Xinhua, “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.”

Xinhua went on to report that, “The Tianwen-1 mission is carrying out the planned exploration and test tasks, obtaining about 560 gigabytes (GB) of data. Both the orbiter and rover are in good condition and operating normally, the CNSA said.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
See images of the tilted Odysseus lander on the moon

The first lunar landing by a U.S. entity in 50 years was celebrated last week, but the lander from Intuitive Machines, named Odysseus, has had a challenging time as it landed at a tilted angle. New images released by the company show the damage that the Odysseus lander incurred during landing and sitting tilted on the moon's surface, but the company stressed that it considered the mission a success as it was able to perform a controlled soft landing and get science data from all of its payloads.

The lander is expected to run out of power within a few hours, but there is a possibility the company will be able to power it back on in a couple of weeks once the lunar night ends.

Read more
Astronaut captures stunning images of a snowy Grand Canyon

In the final days of his six-month stint aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen took some time out of his science work to snap some striking photos of a snow-covered Grand Canyon.

The images were captured from the station in recent days as it orbited Earth at an altitude of around 250 miles.

Read more
Check out these cool Earth images from the latest moon mission

Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander captures an image high over Australia as it heads toward the moon. There's much debate as to whether the dot to the left of Earth is the second-stage booster (which is seen more clearly in the first of the four images) or the moon, or something else. Intuitive Machines

Soon after SpaceX successfully launched Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander toward the moon last Thursday, the spacecraft snapped some extraordinary images of Earth.

Read more