13 Feb. () –
The Tianwen-1 orbiter has completed two years around Mars and will continue to perform multiple tasks related to the investigation of the red planet, announced the CNSA, Chinese space agency.
The orbiter’s payloads, which include advanced cameras and detectors, have transmitted copious images of Mars over the past two years, and these images are now helping Chinese researchers draw a high-resolution, full-color image of the planet, added the space agency, quoted by Xinhua.
The Chinese probe to Mars consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. On February 10, 2021, Tianwen-1 entered Mars orbit after a nearly seven-month journey from Earth, becoming the country’s first satellite to orbit the planet.
On May 15, 2021, it landed in the preselected area in Utopia Planitia, a vast Martian plain, marking the first landing of a Chinese probe on the planet. A week later, on May 22, 2021, the Zhurong rover, which resembles a butterfly, descended from its landing pad to the Martian surface. Afterwards, the Tianwen-1 orbiter provided Zhurong with relay communications for nearly six months.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter thoroughly studied the Martian surface. Although it suspended explorations when the sun blocked communications with Earth between September and October 2021, it continued to provide useful engineering data for Chinese and foreign scientists during that period, and those data have contributed to several notable results of scientific research.
