China’s Tianwen – 1 spacecraft currently orbiting Mars has returned its first high definition images of the Red Planet and it’s incredible. There really is no such thing as too much Mars.
In early February, the probe returned its first images of Mars, but these new images released by the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) are much more detailed and show clear features on the surface.
The probe, which in a not-too-distant future orbits Mars to make a landing on the surface, took the surface photos with its high-definition camera when it was about 330-350 kilometers (205-217 miles) above the Mars surface. The color image, taken by another camera on the orbit, shows Mars’ north pole in beautiful detail.
The two black-and-white images have a resolution of 7 meters, which means that the cameras can distinguish objects at only 7 meters from each other and reveal mountain reefs, craters and sand dunes. The Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reports that the largest impact crater here is about 620 meters (2,034 feet).
Tianwen-1, which means Questions to Heaven, was launched to Mars in July 2020, along with Perseverance and the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars, Hope, thanks to the short launch window last summer which meant that the journey to Mars only would be 7 months.
The spacecraft consists of the orbit, a lander and a 6-wheeler. The orbit reaches Mars on February 24, 2021 and the CNSA has said that it will orbit Mars for three months before landing, possibly in May or June 2021. According to the agency, they are monitoring the southern part of Mars ‘Utopia Planitia,’ a large plain inside the Utopia crater – the largest recognized crater in the entire solar system – as a landing site.
The as yet unnamed rover can move 200 meters (656 feet) per hour, which is pretty fast for a Mars rover. Curiosity is currently spinning at 140 meters (460 feet) per hour and perseverance, when underway, could make 152 meters (500 feet) slightly faster. It also has six scientific tools to perform tasks on the planet, including ground-penetrating radar and a multispectral camera.
Until the landing capsule of Tianwen-1 is released and which will be the most hopeful sixth rover on Mars, all seven payloads on the track will be activated during its three-month stay in a parking track to perform tasks such as analyzing land functions and monitoring the weather for optimal landing.
As CNSA pointed out, Tianwen-1 is the world’s 46th Mars mission and only 19 of them were successful, so we join in May or June when we again undergo the wild ride that is the “7 minutes of terror” while China trying to make history as only the second nation to successfully land a rover on Mars.