Tianwen-1 is a space mission from China to bring an orbiter, a lander, and a rover to the planet Mars. The mission launch took place on July 23, 2020 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.
And now we its first orbital high – definition images of the Martian surface, made public by the CNSA (National Space Administration of China).
CNSA
Tianwen-1 entered its preset parking orbit over Mars on February 24 and will fly in this orbit for about three months before launching its landing capsule.
In May or June it would thus land in the southern part of Utopia Planitia on Mars, a great plain within Utopia, the largest recognized impact basin in the solar system, becoming the sixth rover of humanity deployed on Mars , following its five predecessors of the United States.
The images that at the moment reach us in high definition are three. Two black-and-white images with a resolution of 7 meters were taken by the high-definition camera on the Tianwen 1 orbiter when the probe was about 330 to 350 kilometers away. And a third color image that was generated by another camera on the orbiter, showing the north pole of Mars.
China’s Martian program started in 2009 in partnership with Russia. However, the Russian spacecraft Phobos-Grunt with a Chinese Yinghuo-1 satellite crashed on November 9, 2011, after lift-off. After that, China began its own project to explore Mars .