It’s a wrap for China’s Tianwen-1 Mars mission, but rover and orbiter still ready to work
- Team releases new photos of the red planet’s southern polar cap and an 18,000m volcano
- Chinese space agency says it plans to share data with international scientists at the ‘proper time’
“Tianwen-1 employed many different instruments. The data they obtained, when combined, makes our knowledge of Mars more comprehensive.”
Visual Explainer: China’s rover makes historic landing on Mars
While the mission is ending, the instruments involved, including a rover and an orbiter, are still in working order.
The orbiter will stay in orbit and continue remote sensing the planet while seeking opportunities for future experiments and acting as a relay satellite for the instruments on the ground.
02:14
New images of Mars sent back by China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter
The Chinese team released new photos from Mars to mark the official end of the mission.
They included a bird’s-eye view of Ascraeus Mons, an 18km (11 mile) -high volcano with a diameter of 456km. The image shows detailed features of a volcanic crater on the summit.
There is also a photo of the planet’s southern polar cap. Researchers believe that the polar caps on Mars consist primarily of frozen carbon dioxide and water.
Just before it went into hibernation, Zhu Rong also took an image of the area it patrolled, showing a sand dune with some tiny rocks.
03:08
China joins elite club of countries that have reached Mars
Tianwen-1 was launched by a Long March 5 rocket on July 23, 2020 from the Wenchang spaceport in the island province of Hainan.
The orbiter has travelled 706 days and circled Mars 1,344 times, while the rover has travelled 1,921.5m over the surface of the planet.
China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter uses ‘selfie stick’ to capture ice caps on Mars
The agency shared data with Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) to avoid collisions in orbit, and the Zhu Rong rover and the ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft conducted a relay communication experiment.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter has also teamed up with observatories in Russia, Germany, Italy, Australia, South Africa and other countries to study solar winds as part of an international effort to improve the accuracy of space weather forecasts.
